Quoting Alessandro Selli (alessandroselli@???):

>   I am one of those who can't do without initramfs because I mostly run
> GNU/Linux on laptops and for obvious security reasons they all run on
> fully encrypted filesystems, / included.

True enough. One of several legitimate edge cases.

>   However I do loath the / and /usr merge.  I find it irritating that I
> am asked to provide with sound technical reasons to keep the two
> filesystems separated as I needed to justify 4 decades of sound
> sysadminiship practice when it's the proponents of the merge who in fact
> have been doing a poor job to justify the purported need of the merge. 
> Their reasons all boil down to: "it's the way we want to do stuff". 

Ding!

Exactly the recurring pattern with Freedesktop.org/GNOME talking points:
What's irritating isn't their wishing to do things for uncompelling
reasons, but rather justifications built from circular reasoning and
illogic, implying their authors think readers are a bit dim.

My response tend to be: Fine, run with your bad choices, and enjoy
life, but kindly spare us the tiresome stemwinders about how any other
view is wrong. I'll either avoid running your code or correct your
blunders, and then we'll both be happy.

One sometimes must override a distro's policies, too, but the difference
is that they by and large aren't laying down a fog layer of badly
written propaganda to justify what they wish to do. (Well, except
Fedora. ;-> )