This is the key part for me. If there were sufficient jobs and breeders to maintain genetic diversity in the breeds by only breeding top workers who performed their historical jobs then fine, I'm in. But there are very, very few breeds in which that is true.
I "live" in a breed for whom the lack of genetic diversity is the biggest problem. It's the reason for the cancer issues. Genetic heterogeneity is incredibly important in the body's fight to keep itself healthy, so when folks start talking about artificially eliminating large segments of their breeding population over something like not having access to a large farm and huge numbers of livestock (some herding breeds), a name (this K/Coolie debate), coat type (Belgian Shepherds in the U.S.), it makes me a big sick to my stomach. Establish a line, breed what you want, but splintering into infinite discrete shards is not healthy for the breeds.
I "live" in a breed for whom the lack of genetic diversity is the biggest problem. It's the reason for the cancer issues. Genetic heterogeneity is incredibly important in the body's fight to keep itself healthy, so when folks start talking about artificially eliminating large segments of their breeding population over something like not having access to a large farm and huge numbers of livestock (some herding breeds), a name (this K/Coolie debate), coat type (Belgian Shepherds in the U.S.), it makes me a big sick to my stomach. Establish a line, breed what you want, but splintering into infinite discrete shards is not healthy for the breeds.
In the current construct of "purebred", especially for those breeds working within the popular registry systems, those segments of your population which have been rejected for political or aesthetic purposes may be your only option one day when you find yourself in a genetic corner and needing diversity. I would give just about anything to find a pool of FCRs somewhere in the world with a set of genes largely bred out of our current population who were healthy. And frankly I don't care if they've allowed yellows to breed or haven't retrieved a duck in six generations...we HAVE that...the burning desire to retrieve anything and everyone to their people would not be wiped out with careful intelligent outcrossing...and it would be more than worth it to get that diversity back in our breed.
With Belgians, we are lucky in that we can import dogs and register them as what they are. This gives a possibility for greater genetic diversity in the dogs in the US than there used to be (it used to be 3 generations of "pure" according to AKC breeding). Denise Fenzi's AKC registered Tervs are out of working Malinois lines. I just wish one of the varieties didn't have epilepsy as a concern, that would be so awesome. But yeah from the standpoint of a breed that is split in AKC but really shouldn't be...I don't understand the desire to split off into new breeds because different people are selecting for different things. A lot of white GSD people seem to want to split into a new breed, some have already taken steps in that direction. I understand they want to show but...is that really worth limiting your gene pool so much? Belgians were basically split in the US for show too and it really wasn't the right thing for the breed...or breeds. Really varieties. They should have been AKC varieties, like Collies are. People could opt to keep their "pure" lines of whatever variety or do inter-variety breeding. Intervariety breeding goes on now anyway and there's already tons of AKC registered dogs with IV breeding in their pedigrees, even out of IV breedings done outside of the US (with littermates also AKC registered...as different breeds).