I found that self-serving piece from tobster911 pretty hard to take, too. Many of us come from very humble backgrounds and managed to get a foot-hold in aviation with resorting to chisel charters, as well as managing to later make our aircraft available as easily as possible to newcomers. I've paid for nearly every hour of my flying and, now that I think about it, the few exceptions have often been by the grace of AOC holders who could probably ill afford it.
Ebbie has it pretty right. Regulators tend to manage by crisis and at some point a death or mishap will be tested in court and the whole "holding out" argument tested. By that point, the various insurers will have run a mile, with endless subrogation clauses invoked, leaving a set of unfortunates to slug it out. Understandably, a lot of the discussion here has been from the pilot's point of view but many of the saddest illegal charter/joyflight cases involve passenger deaths or injury where the survivors have been affected greatly by the lack of safeguards (including robust insurance) offered by an AOC. If you're not convinced by the arguments about the effects on AOC holders, at least take a look at some of the illegal charter outcomes in your jurisdiction.