Thank you so much for taking time to write this explanation. It makes sense, everything is a tradeoff of sorts. In the end I think the single most important thing is a strong vision and idea of how this game works and what do you want to "say" with it. And you definitely have this vision, decisions were made with purpose and I'll always respect that.
If you decided to remove it, there would probably be people complaining that it doesn't make sense for a hotline and it leaves them with analysis paralysis :D