The way I see aquariums is that they are a poor construction of what nature has. The equivalent stocking of a 240 gallon aquarium to what fish have normally in a lake or river is perhaps something as unlikely as one 6 inch fish. Thus, anything we do to improve that quality is a good thing since we start woefully behind.
I'm all for reducing maintenance. Some things that can be done are adding automatic water changers, increasing tank size, reducing tank stock, changing food or changing tank stock, improving plumbing design, using larger sumps, changing substrate, using larger pumps, adding UGJ or wave generators, adding UV, adding finer sized filters, adding water conditioners or changing how we actually filter water (for example wet/dry versus UGF.) These can be done in a way to reduce maintenance while not worsening aquarium conditions.
I just consider the act of choosing not to remove and clean a dirty filter (when it can be done quickly and easily) as reducing maintenance at the cost of aquarium conditions. That's not consistent with the above list which are meant (imo) to improve water conditions or maintain them while reducing maintenance. Intentionally leaving debris in a system that is already 10 to 50 x less volume in water than nature provides is something else.
It's true that nature traps debris as well and does not 'remove' it to a trash can, toilet or sink, but it does so in volumes of water that dwarf what we offer. I just personally think that easy methods to remove debris entirely from the system are great.