Even an empty block helps people out. If nothing else, the empty block makes the coinbase transaction from 120 blocks previous become spendable. In practice, the empty block brings all those 5-confirmation transactions up to 6 confirmations (and 2-confirmation transactions up to 3 confirmations, etc.) The presence of the empty block makes transactions confirm faster than they would have if the empty block weren't there.
There is no need to try and "speed up" transactions artificially. Everything positive you said about an empty block applies to a block full of transaction, only the full block provided worth to the network because it contains transactions, which is
a block's purpose. You even admit in your post that a full block is better than an empty block. And I still do not see any benefit from an empty block, but again I appreciate the attempt at explaining to me.