When I said plenty of places are surviving without such a policy I was referring to hotels and dive ops on Cozumel, not bars and restaurants in Austin. Your counter that some places are not surviving is not a valid counter to my statement unless you can point to hotels and dive ops on Cozumel.
We accepted the airline terms because all the airlines adopted similar terms and we had no real alternative. If the day ever comes when all hotels in Coz require nonrefundable deposits then we may have to accept those terms. But until then, we do not.
You seem rather "confident" and "sure" about a lot of things for someone that admits you "don't know" what will happen.