Well who knows what Yagudin would have been able to do if he trained CoP skating from a young age, but that's irrelevant.
We can never tell what they could have done if they were trained under CoP. But they are all human, not super human. My point is you can't expect them to jump 100 cm in height and 400 cm in length with 876484920 of transitions before it. I have no doubt Yagudin is a great talent and I was his fan in the old days, but it is logical to assume that had Yagudin trained under CoP, he would have meet the same issues with the current top men.
Yes, people may not be able to focus as much on huge, airy jumps when they have many other complexities in their program to work on. But that doesn't mean you just score the jumps incorrectly and ignore those other qualities.
I respectly disagree with this. The skaters who choose to jump the old style STILL get credit for their jumps. If you look at score sheets you still see that most skaters who have huge jumps still get around +2 GOE despite their lack of transitions. Brezina, Kovtun etc, practically everyone still get good GOE when they land their jumps. It is the inconsistency that hinders their chances, not the new trend of jumping technique or which is prefered.
The people who DO choose to do jumps like that need to be rewarded for it and jumps that lack great quality shouldn't be getting a bunch of extra points simply because of a random, inconsequential step being placed before/after the jump.
They get +1 and +2 GOE and sometimes even +3 depends on their landing which is rightful according to the rule. I do agree that the highest GOEs are handing out too easily these days. But it is applied for all the top favourites and in fact it is not much different from 6.0 when some top favourites did well and got too many 6.0.
Putting steps before jumps should get some plus point because that's how the current system is rewarding. They get points for the difficulty and there is nothing wrong with that. The thing is how much difficult it is and how much it should be rewarded.
Another thing is, I don't see how men's quads these days are smaller than the top men's quads in the old days (yes some do have tiny jumps but the top men like Yuzuru, Javi, Patrick... their jumps are all BIG. They also have to do harder layout, harder transitions, harder spins etc... Their 3As might not be as high in the old days but some are longer. And honestly it's not the 3A their main concern, it's how to land the multi quads.
Not true. The current rules can be changed. The "second half" bonus for jumps could be pushed further back, so that people aren't able to so easily cram a bunch of jumps into the "bonus" section of the program. The GOE scoring guidelines for jumps can be changed to better reward the qualities I've been talking about. The scoring of the Program Components can also improve, with a more accurate emphasis on choreography and interpretation, not just "transitions = choreography".
The extra jump combinations generally just means the skater must throw in an extra random +2Toe (or two) somewhere in the program, and it also allows skaters to skimp out on the most difficult jump combinations. Since everyone must do 3 jump combinations, and difficult combinations are not given extra reward, people are able to just put their +2Toe on their hardest repeat jump of the program and then do the more difficult +3Toe or +3Sal combo on an easier jump.
I agree that the current rules can be changed. But at the moment skaters are still exploiting what's most usefull and effective. Your preference has nothing to do with what they see as the most effective to them. And as the sport and the system have become more and more complex, I don't think you can undo the trend and make it more simple.
Modern programs would be a little better off if only 2 jump combinations were required in the LP. Ideally there would be optional elements in the Long Program, extra jump combinations could be a choice.
How is this better than the current system?
Tara Lipinski DID have explosive jumping technique. She may not have had huge jumps, but that's simply because of how small she was. Her jumps had amazing SNAP to them - her rotation was excellent, she rotated more in the air on her Lutz and Flip than most of the Ladies do these days; she didn't turn her toepick around on the takeoff but instead went straight back into the jump. That snap to her jumps is what allowed her to do the difficult jump combinations that the other ladies weren't able to do.
I strongly disagree. There is nothing explosive in Tara's technique at all. At least in my opinion. AND what made Tara did the combo she did was not only because of her technique, had she skated until she passed puberty I highly DOUBT that she could still land those combo. It's the same with other wonder babies who did so many difficult jump combination before puberty and lost them when they grew up. Let's not forget Adelina once had 3lo combinations as well...
The "new generation" of audience for figure skating is drastically smaller than it used to be, one of the reasons being how much more mechanical and less visually/emotionally pleasing the modern skating has been at times.
I don't agree with this. There is no measurement of how smaller the new generation of FS audience have become. They're much different and from many other parts in the world thanks to the internet. The skating fan community in American has become smaller maybe but it does not mean in the other parts of the world it has become smaller, in fact it might have become bigger and you have no way of measuring it.
so it's not like the explosive jumping technique (but cost you too much energy) was much more treasured in the first place. 
I don't know to laugh or cry, sorry..
