I generally go along with the approach that fit and able people should not use powered trolleys/push carts etc. However, I'd be inclined to add an age factor into this as well, for both the old and the young plus there's also the ability of boys-vrs-girls to carry weighted objects for prolonged times, although that's another debate (and I'm not going there!).
My understanding is that the human body is still growing until about age 22-ish and therefore there is the possibility for prolonged carrying of heavy golf bags to cause a long-term injury to the body, which may not even become apparent until the individual becomes older. And these days many juniors start much younger than previous generations. Certainly there seems to be a large amount of 'clobber', as Jon so beautifully phrases it, carried these days, not sure it's all necessary though and a good point was made earlier about the size of bags and the size of manufactures names and logos. Personally I've always found that if the bag is reasonably slim it's the umbrella and the number of balls you carry that makes the biggest weight difference rather than purely the number of clubs you carried, but these days full 14-club sets are commonplace even amongst younger juniors.
Are there any physiotherapist or osteopaths etc who would like to comment on this aspect?
On a 'lighter' note (groan/yawn!), maybe powered trolleys are needed to carry all the waters bottles and snacks folk seem to take around with them these days, not surprising mind you, you probably need a snack or two or three, if not a whole tray of soup and sandwiches, given that 4-5 hr rounds are becoming regrettably more frequent. Maybe it's not a 'lighter' note though, ho, ho, ho (I'm not allowed to say 'tee hee', I've been told off for that, although not by the normal user I should point out!).
Furthermore, is it just the state of Scottish golf that's not what is it once was? What about soccer? I was going to say rugby union as well, but that improved during this years Six Nations. Any more sports suffering?
All the best.