bstoin,
I tend to agree with you: using GFCI receptacles for fixed in place appliances such as freezers or sump pumps is a mis-application that will cause more damage than it prevents.
However the 'professional' response is not 'I will blithely ignore the code.' Instead it is 'I will try to get the code changed.' _You_ can participate in the code making process if you so choose. You can also petition your local government to adopt the NEC with amendments. But the NEC, once adopted by a local government, becomes _law_. Saying that you are going to intentionally violate a law is an entirely different kettle of fish. Sometimes a law is so unjust that you should intentionally violate it...and be willing to go to prison for this 'civil disobedience'. I don't believe that GFCI requirements rise to this level of importance
My feeling on GFCIs for this application is that they will work to save lives.
However any safety tool must be evaluated in terms of costs and benefits. GFCIs cost money. Damage caused by GFCIs tripping in situations where the don't actually protect a life is another cost. That 'freezer of defrosted food' or 'basement unnecessarily flooded' is a cost. These costs come out of resources that could be spent elsewhere, and the resources lost were the product of human effort. Destroy enough _stuff_ and you have essentially made someone's live a waste.
The calculus of this sort of 'death versus damage' is tremendously difficult, with lots of unknowns, and at some point it comes down to assigning a dollar value to a human life, and so is often very uncomfortable to discuss.
I do not know the actual numbers, so I am going on a gut feeling here. I believe that the costs of these additional GFCIs will outweigh the benefits. I believe that in this situation, we will trade small amounts damage to large numbers of people (more stress, poorer living conditions, health effects from flooded basements, food poisoning) in order to prevent serious damage (electrocution)to a very few people.
I also want to make clear that I am discussing GFCIs as applied to fixed appliances that run unattended, where loss of power may go un-noticed for a time, and with good grounding such that ground fault leakage current is almost certainly returning through the ground pin of the appliance. I believe that, for the most part, GFCIs are very beneficial, and I support requiring GFCIs, but with the exceptions that have served well up to now.
-Jon