It's true that the HAM clubs tend to put a cultural emphasis on emergency communications. But the primary value add is the community with its various memoranda and training/standardized way of handling emergency communications. The radio skill-set and equipment is more of a red herring, tbh.
Even being tuned into the amateur radio community and living through several regional natural disasters that knocked out cell phone coverage, I've never actually seen HAM radio operators turn out to be useful in emergencies.
I'm glad for the robustness provided by the HAM community, and I think allocating spectrum is a small price to pay for a set of volunteers who serve as yet another layer of "backup infrastructure". It's valuable to have that robustness.
But tbh in an actual emergency or natural disaster I'd MUCH rather have my inReach mini than my hand-held. The HAM emergency communications narrative is vastly over-stated (and, honestly, self-important in a way that's off-putting to pretty much all non-HAMs).
>I've actually seen hams go on a >20 minute rant about how digital is ruining ham radio.
Digital ruined a lot of things. Analog is/was just so much more open and ripe for hacking. Part of the advantage of digital was this security. However, going digital allowed us to do so much more, so it's a migration that could not be stopped.
The only time HAMs are paid any attention are in times of disaster. Nobody will notice the loss of HAMs until the next major disaster near them, and then everyone will look around and ask "what happened to all the HAM guys?"