"It is the very participation of parties unrelated to the direct cash commodity that makes for better, smoother, price discovery and market functionality."

That is a statement you made in one of your posts here.  If you did not intend that to mean "market smoothing" then I apologize for misunderstanding what you wrote.

Have you ever participated in a cash market without a futures contract?  If you haven't, what you seem to not be understanding from what I have written is that volatility is not a significant feature of a strictly cash market place.  It is the futures market that adds volatility.  A purely cash market has very little volatility because it requires changes in fundamentals to move the market.  Absent fundamental changes the market is very stable. 

The other points you make, while I disagree with most of them, come down to a matter of opinion with no way to prove or disprove either of our positions.  I think the defenders of the futures markets are falling in to the trap of normalcy bias.  What always has been, always should and will be.  The futures markets are really a fairly young thing and they are in no way essential to the functioning of the cash markets.  There is no better price discovery than sending cattle through a sale ring, whether they are fresh weaned, feeders, or fats.  Does that mean that people would have to assume more risk?  Of course, but that also means that individuals would, by necessity of self preservation, have to do more due diligence prior to making a purchase. 

If I was going to operate without a futures market as a feeder I would do two things:  Never purchase a calf to feed unless I had a packer contract or at least an agreement with the packer's buyer and I would never buy calves that I didn't know the producer that raised them.  If I didn't have those two things I would never take the risk of feeding calves.  Would we see the wild prices of a couple of years ago?  Unlikely, but it is a fools paradise to think that you can make enough in the short lived peaks to make up for the prolonged losses of the valleys in the markets.  I would much rather deal with the slow and steady markets of the purely cash commodities to the roller coaster insanity of the futures traded commodities.