Tail download is not a prerequisite for speed stability either. This can be seen by considering that I can build a computer model which accurately predicts aircraft speed stability behaviour and response (or indeed an analytical model too) by reference solely to aircraft-level stability derivatives.
There's little doubt you can do this on a computer, and we recognize that tailless aircraft were reasonably successful long before the era of digital computers and artificial stability.
I guess the issue is - is the "stabilizer" a misnomer? Should it really be called "a component of an aircraft's stabilization design"??
And - of the hundred of thousands of aircraft built since 1903, how many DO NOT use negative stabilizer lift as a design characteristic?
