Dan,
Two comments:
I agree with much of what you have stated, but you need to state it with better economy of words. Sound logic and friendly persuasion generally make the point in three sentences or less.
What I personally like about colored flags is they are much easier to manage from a maintenance standpoint, compared to pin placement balls, flags on the stick, or pin pacement sheets. And the guy who changes cups only has to bring one flag with him from hole to hole. In fact, if he grabs the flag off the eighteenth hole and brings it with him to the first hole, the color that he took from 18 will tell him where to put the hole on the first hole. Then the first hole flag is carried to the second hole, guiding him in where to put that hole, and so on. So from a simple maintenance standpoint, colored flags are actually helpful in keeping hole rotations in order.
The guy who taught me how to change cups was an old Mexican gentleman, who had his own acronyms for keeping track of front-middle-back, middle-back-front, and back-front-middle rottations. The system he taught me was FAT-MR-BROWN, MY-BROTHER-FERNANDO, and (my favorite) BIG-FAT-MOMMA.