"dissed by the progressives..."
Or is it a case of your being overly sensitive? I'm not seeing any "dissing" of people who reload on single-stage presses, Smokey. I'm seeing complaints about how long it takes to load a box of ammo on a single stage press, but that's quite different. Don't identify so closely with your equipment.
"Can you crank out CONSISTENT loads..."
Quite frankly, yes.
I know more than one SERIOUSLY COMPETITIVE rifle shooters (as in winning lots of matches, or placing very highly) who do all of their match loading on Dillon progressive presses.
I also know a number of nationally ranked handgun shooters in various disciplines who load ALL of the competition ammo on Dillon presses.
"Weighing every charge like I can..."
That may not be as big an advantage as it would seem. A number of tests done over the years, including by Gen. Julian Hatcher at the US Army Ordnance Dept., and by staff at NRA, have shown that there is no appreciable difference in accuracy potential over charges that are weighed individually as opposed to those that are thrown consistently in a good volumetric measure as long as consistent loading practices are exercised in both cases.
Hatcher and others (I believe Ed Harris and Joe Roberts did the testing at NRA) were using primarily IMR powders, as ball powders were not available to Hatcher, and were not yet common when Harris and Roberts were doing their work.
I've routinely turned in sub 1/4" groups with my .243 over the years, using IMR-4064 and charges that are thrown with an RCBS Uniflow measure, but not weighed. I've never used ball powders for rifle reloading. When I was loading rifle heavily, BL-C2 and 748 were the common ball powders, and they didn't offer me the performance levels that I wanted.
Consistency in operation is the key to throwing consistent powder charges whether you're throwing charges of stick powders, flake powders, or ball powders.
Yes, a progressive is a lot more complex to set up. But in my experience, in pulling one out of the box and setting it up from scratch, the first box of ammo takes longer to produce. The second, and subsequent, boxes of ammo take a lot less time.
The complexity of changing calibers depends on the machine.
Changing over a Dillon or a Hornady is a lot faster if you have pre-established tool heads because your dies are already set up. The entire tool head is removed, but there's little risk of the die settings being changed.
Changing the locator buttons in the shell plate isn't much of a hassle, nor is changing the shell plate. Maybe a little longer than changing the shell holder in the ram of a single stage, but still comparable.
Setting up the dies in a single stage takes a little bit of time to ensure that you haven't changed the setting inadvertently. Not a significant amount of time, but certainly it's there. There's also physical swap-out time. Probably the biggest counter to this is Hornady's new sleeve lock dies (I dont' think that's the correct name) but it allows very rapid changing of the dies with extreme repeatability. Nice feature.
Note that the shooter in question is also shooting upwards 600 rounds a week. How many times have you shot 600 rounds in a week consistently? Given that I used to do all of my loading on a Rock Crusher, I'd have to say that those 600 rounds, especially given that it's a mix of calibers, could conceivably take, with change out time included, upwards an hour per 50 rounds if each charge is weighed.
The big question that you need to answer for yourself, Smokey, isn't one of "is faster really better?"
You should be asking yourself "Is slower really necessary?"
In this day and age, with the progressives that we have available, the answer is no.
