Can we agree that the purported premise of the "soft/hard-cap" mechanism is to prevent "handicap abuse"?
Chris,
At the risk of parsing vocabulary, "purported premise" by whom? The USGA doesn't mention "handicap abuse" in the explanation of hard and soft caps, either in purpose or function, so if that's part of the premise for soft/hard caps, it's only part.
I think the premise of the handicap system is that demonstrated playing ability doesn't vary much over relatively short periods of time, and so neither should indexes. Counting the best 8 of 20 scores, the soft/hard caps, reviews by the handicap committee; all of those are meant to reinforce the idea of an index at any given moment representing demonstrated playing ability.
I will agree that preventing "handicap abuse" is probably subtext to the official USGA explanation, but I think there is a lot more to it than that, just as there is with other aspects like PCC adjustments.
And I'll go this far; ANYTHING that prevents the manipulation of the handicap system without placing undue burden on those who don't seek to manipulate their indexes is likely to be a good thing. You think the soft/hard cap DOES put an undue burden on "honest and active" golfers, and I couldn't disagree more.