Once someone becomes really good or has an unbeatable strategy, other people could refuse to play him. That's one way a group of friends that played Magic addressed the issue, if one player played a certain deck, we wouldn't play.
Then there's the aspect that once someone gets too good, comes up with unnervingly good strategies and tactics or does something too often, everyone will gear their own strategies toward defeating that one person or one strategy, which will cause them to re-adjust their strategy. People who make the anti-scrub argument probably believe in this "free market" concept, which, if the game is designed well, probably works well, if all players have an "equal" amount of time, effort and cognitive function to dedicate to a game.
But then there's the issue that once someone becomes so much better than other people, no one will really want to play the master. . .except to maybe learn from them. . .but will the master want to teach? In a sense, will the master become ostracized and shunned or will the master choose to teach others?
I got lost after ahwile in your ramble, but I don't expect absolute clearness in a blog entry. . .not like I practice absolute clearness in my own blog entries.
The easiest way not to lose is to not play at all.
No-one starts a war planning to lose, but more than half the time they are wrong.
There's also a certain amount of "the end justifies the means" here.
Heck, there's lots of times I've given myself arbitrary restrictions (i.e. playing GoldenEye64 or Doom with pistol only) as an additional challenge.
I think the whole "scrubs" issue becomes moot when you put restrictions on your self to challenge your self. At least, that's always been my interpretation.
Lex, I actually wrote the first pass of this as a msg on a gaming board, so I might've made too many assumptions about my audience.
I had all but waken up, so it could go either way, but I think I understood enough to know that I could understand more if I give it more thought.
Falls under meta-game and game theory type stuff.