Hi Felix,
Nothing fundamentally wrong with your arguments but to balance them a little I had a client just recently ask for text to be made smaller (it wasn't in any way large) and they often ask for spacing to be reduced in order to get more content "above the fold". I think pointing the blame at designers is a little general when you consider the overriding need for smaller font sizes is to squeeze more content in, particularly with regards to advertising, promotional placements, etc.
Nick
Setting a smaller % size on the body means, as a designer, you can bring
the overall font size for a page down to something a little more usable
for most people
Where do people get off making this assumption? Where are the poll results that show "most people" think browser text is too big? Nearly everyone I've run into who thinks browser text is too big is a web page designer. Most web browser users I've run into think most web page text is too tiny. Based upon total population, the number of users who think web page text is too small has to be far greater than the number of designers who think the default is too big, who consequently reduce it on the pages they create. I'm not alone in this line of thinking: http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/font-size-quotes.html
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