but telling me I cannot do what I want on my phone will never work.
Playing devil's advocate; that is where I feel OEMS went wrong. They spent so much time and effort putting up barriers and that made people want to root more. Load up the phone with features, specs, and whatnot and people will not even bother to want to root.
Even of those rooted in this thread, we are down to the main reason left to root is to remove ads (minus those who still ROM).
A year ago I created a similar thread and the main reasons people rooted I listed in the op (minus ads). Not saying I would ever say give up root or stop pushing for development devices like the Nexus, but year after year the voices are getting quieter. And unlike previous years when asked why I rooted and responded with a passionate list of reasons, I am now left asking myself the same question only to realize the list has decreased. Before, the trump card was that you could make your android device better by rooting. But now I can not say that. Look I am not saying that roms and stuff are not cool to play with. But those who rom know the game and know that for every good rom there are several that might as well be alpha and beta builds that are passed as stable. For the hardcore that is ok but that is not something I would recommend to someone new to android. Plus, what you give up by rooting (various apps not working, potential voiding of warranty, soft bricking a device) the rewards are barely (if at all) outweighing the risks or time and effort used to root/rom/keep up with the latest rom build (that was what did it in for me with roms, I no longer had the time to continue to follow the latest builds and what they broke/fixed/broke).
Honestly, to those that Rom. Are you really getting more battery life (I mean significantly more and not just an hour or 2) that you go....man I would not have gotten through my day today if it was not for rom/kernel ______ (well maybe if you are rocking a Samsung device then maybe)?
Or the speed this rom offers is really noticeable, even over the built in settings in Google's development settings of dropping the speeds to .25?
It's like getting a new Nissan GT-R and feeling the need to modify it. You modify it because you just want to tinker with something but the reality is the modifications made is most likely insignificant because the car you bought was already a beast. To me that is a good thing because finally the manufacturers listened and gave us a beast from stock vs a pup we had to mold.
I am glad we have people who still root and like you I feel like they would have to pry SU permissions from my cold dead hands. But I realize that in less than two years we will be passing out t-shirts that says "SU 4 life" so that people will not forget how far android has come because of the rooting and development community. And in 2 years rooting will be met with more people saying "I remember doing that back in the day" and a generation of members who will have no clue what root was or what it did for android. People will use their new devices and will never know that that neat new feature they are using was developed years ago by small time developer who spent many sleepless nights perfecting it for his ROM only to have people praise Samsung/Google/Apple/(other OEM) for their innovation in putting it in their latest phone.