And, currently there's nothing stopping anyone running a public node from charging a fee for miners to use it, and there's nothing stopping anyone from avoiding using that node (not intended to be snarky, just making the point since it's directly relevant).

And currently there are enough issues with p2pool where people are avoiding it and going with higher priced proprietary pools.  Arguably those issues could be fixed, but if only there was a way to get them fixed...........

We are at the point where you have to pool mine in order to make anything, are we all agreed on that?

That being the case, I would rather mine at a pool where I know any fee I pay is going to the betterment of the whole pool and all who mine on it, including myself (third point in my statement - distribute the rest back to all the miners), rather than to make someone or some company rich off my labor.  1% of a BTC is what, $5?  did anyone get a coffee on the way to work this morning?  How much did that cost you?  If forgoing a cup of joe for a couple days meant my Terraminers regained 20% of their hashrate (a piddly little 600GH/s, nothing big  ), sign me up twice.