My turn: Whatever floats your boat. Enjoy it.
A 1x11 with a 10-42 cassette is a 420% range and 11-46 is pretty close at 418%. If that is not enough, 11-50 is 455%. Is that seriously not enough for mountain biking?
No, it’s no where near enough range. A standard 44/34/22 triple with a 11-34 cassette has a
618% range. That’s almost adequate. If you are only doing mountain bike parks or limited range riding perhaps a 420% range will work but if you are ranging over longer distances where you run into lots of different kinds of terrain...including some pavement...that 420% range is very limited. That link above in shows the a 34 tooth midrange 1X11 with a 10-42 cassette. It has no high and a relatively high low.
But with just a little bit of work, it’s possible to get to a
720% range that works quite well. I have a 44/34/20 triple with an 11-36 10 speed cassette. I’m not stuck with having good gears for climbing
or good gears for going downhill. I have both.
Is the simple fact that you can ditch an entire component of the drivetrain (the end that shifts worse) not an obvious advantage?
If you are satisfied with limited gearing, then whatever floats your boat. If you are satisfied with traveling across the entire cassette to get from high gear to low gear instead of being able to make larger jumps to middle and/or low range, then whatever floats your boat.
I’ve also never found the front derailer that hard to adjust properly. The problem isn’t the mechanism...although it could have been designed better as noted above...it’s that people don’t know how to use it properly.