I guess what I'd like is to have the AMA share their mission and vision with the membership. A far as a sanctioning body for events they do a decent job. But promoting model aviation? I'm not sure they really understand what "modeling" is. Mail-ordering a RTF foamie?
The technology has made "Toy" R/C airplanes a reality. Just like R/C cars and boats, when they became so available they became toys instead of hobby equipment the need for ROAR, etc., disappeared.
It appears the AMA expects to make a living off of people who buy toys.
I think they have been sharing that vision, very clearly, with all concerned, for a very long time. Before drones, it was park fliers, and before park fliers, it was RC ARFs wall-to-wall. This has been going on since at least the mid-80's, and I don't think they could have been any more clear about it. As soon as RC became a practical and reliable system in the early -mid 70's, ARFs and RTF built at what we would consider slave wages in slave conditions in China were pretty much inevitable.
If they were running a business, they would be doing exactly the right thing, and serving their market very well. That's how they view themselves, and are acting accordingly, with a few bones tossed out to support the tiny competition contingent (so far...). Once the AMA voters (the majority of whom don't understand any other concept, either) let this start, it was self-fulfilling and essentially impossible to reverse with elections.
This happened a very long time ago, and it has bumbled along with acceptable results until drones came along, because it was perfectly obvious that *drones are going to get regulated*, probably to the point of destruction. That was never a realistic possibility with RC ARFs or park fliers, but is a metaphysical certainty with FPV and drones.
That is the part they seem to be missing, or even worse, they may be delusional enough or greedy enough to risk the destruction of the entire organization on the theory that since they are the 800-lb gorilla, they can control what happens and make it work out OK. They jump on the drone fad, manipulate Congress and the FAA to put them as the middlemen, they sell ads and get kickbacks from the manufacturers, and make the AMA the biggest aviation-related organization in the world. New leather chairs for the conference room, bigger travel per diem to fly to Lausanne, Chad Budreau is the biggest of the big shots!
Me/you/a lot of us here can see why this isn't going to work. But they are more-or-less committed to it at this point, even if they realized it, they can't turn back now- because if they stop and try to reverse course, they are completely out in the cold. Same thing if we tried to take the maybe 10,000 people we would consider to be true modelers and break away.
But you cannot say they haven't been perfectly clear about how they planned to proceed, it's been stated repeatedly. I think we are merely noting that gorillas are on the endangered species list...
Brett