To each his/her own. If you live in Florida you can get by with one brake, maybe no brakes whatsoever. If you weigh 140 lbs, no sweat on descents. My personal experience with discs at 200 lbs is I have the same braking power at the end of a 2800' steep descent as I had at the very top. The classic retort, of course, is that as long as you can lock the brakes you have enough braking power; this ignores the vastly superior modulation of disc brakes (IMHO). I happen to have TRP HY/RD brakes which I find superior to BB7s. On a separate note I really, really like my tubeless road tires despite their being expensive, heavy, unnecessary, suitable only for mountain bikes, etc. I'm also shamed by riding such an ugly bike. Oh, and I'm riding a triple. I'm quadruple shamed to have an ugly, tubeless, triple and disc brake "road" bike.