I think the rule should balance the efforts and capabilities of the winner by material with the smart loser who found the threefold repetition in the first place.
Example : Instead of 1/2 - 1/2 , there should be a system where games are given rating points out of 10 lets say and the person winning by material gets 9 of the 10 points and the person who found perpetual gets 5 out of the 10 points . This gives the loser a draw and the winner a winning accomplishment based on effort .
It's OK to discuss rules as it is OK to discuss politics but the grassroot places where we do it are not the places where changes are decided. Rules in sports and games and politics change over time and the discussion needs to start somewhere. The triggers often come not from inside the targeted domain but from external factors and pressures.
A typical chess factor is the arrival of the computer in chess. You can't just say "2 people agreed on the rules and we ignore the computer" because the external factors are the ones we do not control but which control us! For instance, the first victim in the old rules was the adjournment of games which completely went out of fashion because of peoples "home work" with it. A recent change was in the repetition and 50-move rules. Now a chess game with 5 times the same position automatically draws without claims. That too is related to the computer which can independently terminate a game without the players having a say in it. No human intervention is required by either the arbiter or the players. Though the rule applies to OTB chess as well, it is most useful in a digital environment where it is easiest to enforce. Another interesting change is the execution of the castling rule. At one time a player was allowed to castle by "simultaneously"(as if that exists) moving the rook and the king to their destination squares. No longer true since you can't simply do that on a computer screen and now you clearly have to play the king first!
Another factor affecting chess rules is the high drawing percentage in top level chess. Though the chess rules permit a draw outcome, most competitions need a winner. One match winner, not both. So we devised a series of game formats among which the Armageddon format is the weirdest. It effectively changes the scoring of end positions. When you play the wrong color you will lose a game which you would draw by the basic chess rules. You no longer need to go for the stated objective of the game which is checkmate - but not being checkmated yourself is sufficient to get the same result in Armageddon! And what about Chess960 which is another method to get away from known theory and high rates of undecided games. Quite some rule changes when you consider the whole process.
The third place where rules regularly change are chess compositions you also know as puzzles. One fundamental reason they need extra rules is the missing data in diagrams. I won't go into details but the chess composers regularly bump into issues which causes the release of about one Codex update per decade.
Just to say that there are reasons to keep rules up-to-date even for someone made of a conservative fabric. But most changes over the years have come as responses to external threats and they are made precisely to protect as much of the character of the original chess game (rules) as possible!