No, I don't really think he's a luddite, I was just teasing, unless he really is raising a barn right now... but my original point that you contested was that nobody minds having MORE gears on the rear cassette - all the objections are related to planned obsolescence or reliability or incompatibility with existing equipment and all of those objections are perfectly valid in my book. I don't want to spend $1000 or more just to get that 11th cog so I'm sitting at 10 (and 9 on my backup bike) but it's not because I wouldn't mind having 11.

If I could have 18 gears in the cassette without any of the downsides, I'd want 18. Heck, give me a CVT back there, I can think of plenty of occasions when I've wanted an intermediate gear between two cogs that are only two teeth apart.