I think at some point you have to recognize that the original design had weaknesses (which we have done repeatedly) and that includes the "always convertable to $1" thing. The result of the original floor-only-at-$1 design was often breaking the peg on the upside. That hasn't happened recently but is likely to happen again, even if sort-of capped at $1.05 now. The goal is to peg AT, or at least AROUND $1, even the original white paper says this (suggesting that HBD, or SBD at the time, would fluctuate between 99 cents and 1.01, although with the benefit of hindsight we can say this is likely wrong). To do that effectively means moving some of the fee to the other conversion, otherwise we are pegging AROUND $1.025, which is silly.

As @blocktrades said elsewhere, the goal of the conversion operations isn't really for people to use them for personal gain, it is to establish and maintain a peg. As long as they do that, they are serving their intended function. I also agree with his point about a peg with a band being perfectly reasonable (though the size of the band is pretty arbitrary). I just think the band should be around $1, not around $1.025.

I do think when this change is made it should be with sufficient notice, so anyone who wants to "convert into $1 of HIVE" has the opportunity to do so. In practice this won't be a problem as all of our hard forks except those for critical bugs, take months to actually get finalized and activated.