I know a lot of you who use Iron Golems to farm iron are gonna disagree with me on this, but hear me out.
Players literally abuse the iron drops from Iron Golems to make iron farms. Constant, free iron without any sort of effort at all. Where is the fun in this? It completely ruins the point of going out and finding iron in things like shipwrecks, or mining it the old fashioned way. I don't think Iron Golems should drop iron ingots, as it leads to completely broken and unfun iron farms that players make.
Before you say "but zombies drop iron ingots" or "zombified piglins.and drowned drop gold ingots," those are a bit different due to the rare chance of those actually dropping. Making farms using those doesn't have nearly as high of an output as an iron farm using Iron Golems does.
Even though I highly dislike any forms of resource farms, especially automated farms, I've only gone so far as to make iron golems require a player kill, though this does mean in the literal sense - only if the player directly attacked it does it count (much as how Looting works), so bows, splash potions, etc do not (in particular, splash potions enable you to apply damage to many mobs at once). Other mobs that drop resources also require a player kill (only recently hit), including zombie pigmen, witches, and wither skeletons, which all isn't really any different from how XP drops work (with the exception of a bug with zombie pigmen, which only need to be angered to drop rare drops, which should obviously be fixed).
Notably, Mojang tried implementing a similar thing in Java 1.8, but certain(?) influential players were so enraged that they were "forced" to revert it, even though it was still possible to farm them, just not on the massive scale of automated farms (and really, how can anybody ever use 1000+ iron per hour? Maybe for builds, but if iron were really intended to be a large-scale building block it should take only 4 ingots per block, much as quartz does and copper will. This would also help balance the cost of anvils, which would still require 16 iron for a block that breaks after 25 uses, unlike any other crafting block).
Notably, Mojang tried implementing a similar thing in Java 1.8, but certain(?) influential players were so enraged that they were "forced" to revert it, even though it was still possible to farm them, just not on the massive scale of automated farms (and really, how can anybody ever use 1000+ iron per hour? Maybe for builds, but if iron were really intended to be a large-scale building block it should take only 4 ingots per block, much as quartz does and copper will. This would also help balance the cost of anvils, which would still require 16 iron for a block that breaks after 25 uses, unlike any other crafting block).
That's kinda a moot point if you're just going to leave iron ingot drops on Iron Golems if killed directly by players, because they can still get the large supply of iron they need this way if they need this amount for their builds, or to replace what was forever lost from the world by broken tools or lost items in lava or the Void etc.
I don't like the fact that anvils are expensive to make, even worse is the fact they will break after a set amount of uses when no other crafting table-like item will. But if Iron Golems are going to continue to drop iron ingots even with a future nerf/rebalancing, then it's not too much of a big deal how much it costs to make the anvils or iron blocks currently in my opinion.
I am concerned about the rarity of ores in 1.17 though, you can't get raw diamonds in renewable form, although you're not supposed to, and they're meant to be rare. However if Iron Ore is to become rarer in the next update too then that's taking the biscuit, you shouldn't be under any circumstances be discouraged from mining stuff.
I know a lot of you who use Iron Golems to farm iron are gonna disagree with me on this, but hear me out.
Players literally abuse the iron drops from Iron Golems to make iron farms. Constant, free iron without any sort of effort at all. Where is the fun in this? It completely ruins the point of going out and finding iron in things like shipwrecks, or mining it the old fashioned way. I don't think Iron Golems should drop iron ingots, as it leads to completely broken and unfun iron farms that players make.
Before you say "but zombies drop iron ingots" or "zombified piglins.and drowned drop gold ingots," those are a bit different due to the rare chance of those actually dropping. Making farms using those doesn't have nearly as high of an output as an iron farm using Iron Golems does.
Even though I highly dislike any forms of resource farms, especially automated farms, I've only gone so far as to make iron golems require a player kill, though this does mean in the literal sense - only if the player directly attacked it does it count (much as how Looting works), so bows, splash potions, etc do not (in particular, splash potions enable you to apply damage to many mobs at once). Other mobs that drop resources also require a player kill (only recently hit), including zombie pigmen, witches, and wither skeletons, which all isn't really any different from how XP drops work (with the exception of a bug with zombie pigmen, which only need to be angered to drop rare drops, which should obviously be fixed).
Notably, Mojang tried implementing a similar thing in Java 1.8, but certain(?) influential players were so enraged that they were "forced" to revert it, even though it was still possible to farm them, just not on the massive scale of automated farms (and really, how can anybody ever use 1000+ iron per hour? Maybe for builds, but if iron were really intended to be a large-scale building block it should take only 4 ingots per block, much as quartz does and copper will. This would also help balance the cost of anvils, which would still require 16 iron for a block that breaks after 25 uses, unlike any other crafting block).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
That's kinda a moot point if you're just going to leave iron ingot drops on Iron Golems if killed directly by players, because they can still get the large supply of iron they need this way if they need this amount for their builds, or to replace what was forever lost from the world by broken tools or lost items in lava or the Void etc.
I don't like the fact that anvils are expensive to make, even worse is the fact they will break after a set amount of uses when no other crafting table-like item will. But if Iron Golems are going to continue to drop iron ingots even with a future nerf/rebalancing, then it's not too much of a big deal how much it costs to make the anvils or iron blocks currently in my opinion.
I am concerned about the rarity of ores in 1.17 though, you can't get raw diamonds in renewable form, although you're not supposed to, and they're meant to be rare. However if Iron Ore is to become rarer in the next update too then that's taking the biscuit, you shouldn't be under any circumstances be discouraged from mining stuff.