Alpha taxonomy, I think, is getting a raw deal. “Omnispection” is surely not “subjective” but involves considerable measuring, sorting and theory. Higher taxa generated by alpha taxonomists certainly combine metrics of similarity tempered by concern for convergence, often using cluster analysis and parsimony with morphological traits. Phylogenetics starts with exemplars representing alpha taxonomic concepts, then re-sorts them into groups using just a few, albeit important traits, while alpha taxonomists examine a host of specimens and thus evaluate those multifarous traits (as organized by the important traits), and have a grasp of the taxon beyond the phylogenetic data set. (This assumes phylogeneticists are not also alpha taxonomists or are successfully schizoid about their different roles.) Phylogenetics is supposed to be more objective and replicable, but this is only because phylogeneticists have agreed to the same biases and assumptions: weight all traits at one, use the same Dirichlet priors, gamma distributions, etc. This is not to say that phylogeneticists are not aware of the problems, but alpha taxonomy is our fundamental systematic interface with nature and is in dire need of support.

Note that there are two rules of thumb in evolutionary taxonomy: (1) taxa distant on a cladogram or UPGMA are evolutionarily distant, and (2) taxa distant on a taxon tree (distant in time) are evolutionarily distant. Exactly how does modern analysis of morphology add new information beyond being simply more accurate with the same poor information? Molecular analysis is the only decent new source of information, in my opinion, and even that should be restricted to demonstrating genetic continuity and lineage isolation in gene trees (given reliable analysis), because surely taxa that are evolutionarily static can exist in two different molecular lineages.