Is this the sort of naive reasoning that led to the law in the first place?

The EU didn't force the banners. They restricted opt-out data collection without consent, which is a good thing to do. The banners is malicious compliance.

And what lead to the banners is the knowledge that people like you would blame the law instead of the companies.

And they are getting better. I don't remember when was the last time a cookie dialogue forced me to uncheck 10+ switches, and making me angry that they give my browsing history to 1000+ random ad companies--I unironically miss that daily dosage of anger (against ad people and not the EU).

Most of them are one-click nowadays, just as intended. (Still bad on phones tho, especially javascript disabled.)

Yeah now they say "accept all or subscribe". Much better!

There has been a lawsuit over that, I've not heard of its result yet.

Example?

The Guardian does this now.

https://commission.europa.eu/index_en : cookie banner.

Can you find any big sites that don't have one? They're effectively a mandatory CYA, the Prop 65 warning of websites.