Believe it or not, Dave, I agree with you 100%, and I'm not tied forever to the 3 x 2 aspect ratio of 35mm film as HCB was. In Korea and later I worked with 2 1/4 x 2 1/4, and framed appropriately. Later on I worked with 4 x 5 and 8 x 10 view cameras, and framed for them. I currently use my Nikons at 3 x 2, and my favorite Olympus Pen-F at 4 x 3, and frame appropriately. But, as you point out, the camera you have in your hands doesn't always frame as you want it to, so you make your shot realizing that you're going to crop. That's not what I object to.
I object to the guy who sees something he likes and bangs away, probably putting what he saw at the center of his frame without any consideration for the geometry of the resulting picture or where everything else is in relation to the object of his affections, then tries to frame the picture properly by cropping. The result frequently is less than satisfactory and obviously is a crop. As you say, you want as many of the pixels in your camera as possible in on the result, but you also need to think about geometry when you frame.
All that is why I said, in "On Street Photography" (
https://luminous-landscape.com/on-street-photography): "First, you need to practice composition to the point where it becomes intuitive. You don’t have time to line up all those elements of geometry with, say, the rule of thirds. You have to see it whole in your viewfinder without stopping to analyze, to rely on your unconscious and to react instinctively." Once you learn to do that you'll rarely need to crop.
