The other response I’ve seen frequently is “I’ve been playing since the 70s and when we had a problem, someone just manned up and said something and we’d stop playing if needed”.

This seems like a weird argument against safety tools because it boils down to “identify the problem and make a change” which is exactly what the tools do.

I’m glad that these old groups organically developed their own safety tools. Codifying them and making them explicit does just makes them easier for everyone to use and alter to fit their own tables.