I am with you on nonstandardization. I avoid it whenever possible. I am happy with my 27.2mm seatposts and chose against Chris King hubs in favor of White Industries primarily because the latter uses easy to get standard bearings (although I have to say the CK Hub design is kinda cool).
DOS, its pretty clear you go into these decisions more informed than most buyers. Clearly a lot of bicycles are sold with cool "features" that in truth have marginal, if any performance advantages and end up being disadvantages in maintenance or reliability. And most consumers don't have a clue until they have to find a part that's not available. As I pointed out above, I'm really concerned about replacing that seatpost eventually. So this got me, and I consider myself reasonably sophisticated (but dated) regarding bike stuff.
CK stuff is aesthetically pleasing. Very much akin to the Campy Nuovo Record stuff in the 70s. The latter had notably better finish and anodizing and had the Italian eye for style. And most Campy stuff (and, as I understand it, CK stuff) were at the top of the performance curve. But even Campy sacrificed performance for novelty (can we all repeat, in unison, "Delta brakes"?). And tradition and being enamored of the simple beauty of their straight parallogram Nuovo record kept them from introducing the slanted parallelogram RD, ceding that advantage to Sun Tour.
The point is that, while novel design and improvement is sometimes and advance, most of the time its a marketing ploy. And most consumers are ill-equipped to judge between truly useful innovation and, well, the opposite type of innovation.
Going back the this design, you have 1) A non-standard part needed in manufacturing (higher cost, fewer sources), 2) A non-symmetrical part requiring orientation during installation, 3) in aftermarket/replacement, you've forced the consumer to search for a replacement that's scarce and hard to find and non-standard, 4) You (FSA) don't offer the replacement bearings in anyplace that I can see, and 5) the part IS available elsewhere and is not a high-cost part (so you can't rake in the dough for charging, for example, 50 dollars for a 4 dollar bearing as the market offers these things at 8 bucks).
I just see no win here, for anyone. Almost like the designers went out of their way to be stupid. As an engineer, this really bugs me.
As you can probably tell!