One thing that bothers me about extreme bloat is that I do not want every app to push against the limit of what my computer can handle. It's fine if some game or compiler or such complex software do that every now and then. A common pro-bloat argument is that software should make use of all the hardware instead of leaving it idle, and that makes sense in some contexts. But 99% of the time I would prefer smaller things that I could have lots of and never have to worry about disk or RAM use.

I hate that argument too. The computer is there to serve ME, not to serve the software it runs. Each application should be using as little of the hardware as possible, to make it possible for ME to make use of all the software.