That's bullshit, in the NL we are taught the first responsibility of every driver is to get the best outcome for the entire situation, not just blindly follow laws/rules. You're supposed to help the merging by shifting at least 1 lane to the left if it's busy, or by slowing down or speeding up to make space.

When the left lane does not adjust their speed for the incoming driver, the right lane is forced to slow down and sometimes stop completely if traffic is bad enough. This further increases traffic because now the left lane has to stop as well to allow the right lane to merge.

properly zipper merging sometimes requires concessions of the driver in the lane being merged to

No, you can often see what's going on and adjust your speed a little to let merging work well, without causing risk to other traffic.

Well, I can at least.

You can also move in one lane if it's empty to let merging cars enter the outside lane easily.

I was a trucker for a while. I would always get over if I could, but it doesn't always work out that way. The amount of people that assumed a 40000 lb vehicle would dance out of their way so they could merge at 20mph less than prevailing traffic speed was too damn high.

In the US the person in the acceleration lane/on-ramp is responsible for merging with the flow of traffic on the highway, presumably because the person already on the highway has less opportunity to yield safely.

One time, in the middle of the night on an empty highway, as a car was getting on they accelerated right up next to me and then did the same speed as me until the acceleration lane ended and then honked at me for being in their way.

I don't think I was in the wrong there even if it would have been easy to change lanes for the other car. They could have just as easily merged ahead of or behind me.

Depends on the country. In Denmark for example, the one on the highway has to give way to the merging traffic.