i'm not saying that the relay network has been bad for Bitcoin; it may even have been good. except that it is encouraging this non-verification scheme
I'm not sure to understand your logic here.
by encouraging non verification of blocks simply to increase the speed of propagation of blocks thru the network increases the risk of forking, imo.
Where did you read that the relay network encourages mining pools to skip the verification of transactions ?

Imho, knowing that the relay network doesn't verify transactions, a rational mining pool should feel strongly encouraged to verify transactions.
1 If this turns out to be frequent, the difficulty would adjust.
2 If there are no transactions, a block is really not needed.
1. Agreed
2. I'm not sure that users waiting for their N confirmations would agree with your point of view

Anyway, I don't see this point as the most urgent issue and I guess there will be many others challenges to be solved before this one is considered as an urgent problem.