Excellent research and reporting by John T. One question:

Pilots providing the ride should either have prior plans to go
to the destination airport or accept absolutely no form of compensation (no
shared expenses, favor or goodwill).

In your research, did you find definitions of the terms "favor" and/or
"goodwill"? Anyone I have ever flown anywhere for any purpose has
thanked me for it---that sounds like "goodwill".

You are right, this whole situation is asinine. Thanks for doing the
work to try to explain it.