left-pad is symbolic of dependency and supply chain issues generally. If all you took away from that incident is that there's risk only from someone unpublishing the module then you probably need to go back and think about it some more.

I think it'd be more productive to say that instead, since it's strictly more correct than comparing it to left-pad.

(An interesting thing to consider: the worst "supply-chain" type attack in recent memory is probably xz, which has a much more traditional maintenance, development, and distribution model than the median Rust package does. I don't think Rust's ecosystem is even remotely immune to the risk of malicious packages, but I imagine the kinds of dependencies that exist in the current coreutils are much more appealing to a high-sophistication attacker because of their relative lack of publicity/transparency.)

Why would I take anything away beyond the specific scope of the vulnerability to supply chain issues that NPM had? Cargo offers a variety of tools for auditing and managing dependencies that specifically mitigate supply chain issues. If your only suggestion is to not use dependencies at all, that's an extreme opinion.

Don't chide people for failing to read your mind. If you wanted people to take that away, you should've said that. Using a specific example as a metonym for a larger phenomenon is a poor choice in terms of clarity. Of course people responded to the specific example.