You said: While I can understand the desire to put pressure on those who incorrectly configure a server, this is (again) going too far, making life much worse for those who are completely innocent.
These “completely innocent” people are paying ISPs who allow spamming to occur. These “innocents” aren’t malicious, but they are subsidizing malicious ISPs who allow spamming.
In your opinion, blocking the email of these “innocent” people makes their lives much worse. The sysadmins whose customers are being targetted by the spam from the malicious ISPs have a different opinion. Their lives are made much worse by the spam arriving on their systems. And their customers really are completely innocent. So, in the opinion of those sysadmins, they decide to block some or all email from the malicious ISP until they clean up their act.
That’s their opinion, and they can have it, just as you can have yours.
Perhaps the ISPs who are allowing the spamming are not malicious, but just clueless. The harm to the spam recipients is the same.
The clueless ISP will respond to the block by eventually getting a clue and fixing the problem, which will make the spam stop from that ISP. The block list entry will then go away. The malicious ISP will not care, and will continue spewing spam to whoever will still accept it. In either case, the spam has stopped for the block list users.
Simply put, the block lists work. You continue to voice your opinion about the block lists, but have no workable alternative.