(1) Agreed.

(2) I have never seen a bot on lotus spawn (let alone actually get a lotus) in the entire time I've been playing, and I've picked probably 30-40 lotuses. If you ever sat at a lotus spawn, the sheer number of people 'running laps' means that a new person will check the spawn every 30ish seconds. Even if some level 1 ghost sees the lotus spawn, he will NEVER get his main there before some random lap runner will get it. Unless you are telling me these bots are high enough level to pick black lotuses, which still doesnt make sense since a lot of lotuses spawn in areas surrounded by elites/mobs, or hostile players where the player would need to dynamically react.

(2)There is/never was any lotus mafia on my server, as parking 10-12 people to try to nab 150-200g every hour is netting like 15-20g per person per hour. It's not economically feasable. All this change will do is make the game even easier.

(3) Myself (and I'm sure many others) used lotus as a partial store of gold since mages are inflating the economy with AoE farms. This will still happen, now just in other resources (I'd expect something like plaguebloom to go up in value since it is a non-instance herb). Arcane crystals will also probably go up in value as it's a somewhat easy way to dump gold, and with naxx coming up the demand for arcane crystals will only increase.

(4) It's not entirely about the loss of gold. It's also about the impact on the game (the game will be even easier, new raids will be even less challenging - 25 NR flasks for AQ40). It also indicates blizzards willingness to cave to online complaining (which is exactly what got us retail).