Two things.
1. The population of the OSRS community is growing, you can up it up. You are basing your findings off of logging into a world for what, an hour?
2. I believe and this is my opinion, that degradable's are a good thing. as there is both pros an cons to degradable. Degradable's offer the growing community 2 things.
Diversification: new Pking armor, new bossing armor. Verity essentially.
Gold-sink: Jagex is listening to us. They understand that high-alch is forever inflating gold, so Jagex is introducing this brand new gold-sink for us gold sellers benefit.
Of course there are potential cons to degradable's as well.. such as does this open the doors to summoning and that other rs3 content. There will always be change, new best in slot weapons ect.
Hopefully Jamflex keeps updating OSRS in a way to keep it sustainable, not only from a player base perspective, but also for us, the gold-farmers ;)
EDIT: Go vote YES for the degradable gold sink. It helps keep prices of gold HIGHER which clearly benefits everyone on this community should they decide to sell gold.