Apartheid wasn't about taking privileges away from people as a moderation action. It was about denying inalienable rights to people from birth. Your privilege to post on a forum is voluntarily extended to you by it's operators, and may be rescinded. It's an act of hospitality, not an inalienable right. You don't have a first amendment right to post on a forum and note than I have a first amendment right to compel your speech or demand you host me for dinner.
Apartheid wasn't enforced by mild and easily bypassed forum account restrictions. It was enforced with brutal violence.
People can get so myopic about mild inconveniences introduced to online interactions they expect to be frictionless and that they feel entitled to, and lose all perspective at the drop of a hat.
The lapse of communication is what bothers me, and I suppose it's because the moderators know they can't justify the punishment. Preventing someone from protecting their posterity is a pretty selfishly punitive measure, even if you think they abused the edit feature (somehow). It also doesn't prevent future abuse, doesn't communicate how the user can improve and therefore results in a worse community than just banning then and flagging their comments. I don't understand what the purpose of edit restrictions are in their current form, and clearly other users don't either.
It's really my fault, for coming to Hacker News and expecting to be owed anything. I should have known better than to openly criticize the tech industry on PG's own stomping grounds.
On the other hand your last paragraph is cringe and makes me roll my eyes a lot.
You'll be ok, lots of folks in the tech industry care about you still even if pg personally doesn't.
If you wanted concrete answers, consider emailing the mods and asking.