Chuck, while I respect your experience and standing in the aviation community... It does get a little tiring and disrespectful towards some of the younger professionals out there today how you have a constant holier than thou attitude towards them. You may or may not intend it that way, but thats the way that I am reading it.
I do stand to be corrected if it is not your intention. Since this thread has gone thoroughly off of track, and the original poster has long ago left the building.... I would like to address some of your points.
Yes, things were a lot different out there once upon a time, but things have changed because a lot of people like yourself, did not come home again.
Most rules and regs have come into place after accidents where people have just "swinging the props, gas n oil and file enroute."
We now have to deal with rules and regs on a day to day basis. Not to keep ourselves safe, but for the most part, to cover our own asses.
Was flying more difficult back then as it is now? Perhaps... but up is up and down is still down. The basics are still the same.
The weather is still the same. We still get roaring crosswinds on frozen gravel runways... and a lot of the time its taking aircraft that were never designed for that sort of flying into those strips.
A lot of the northern runways might as well be using blow pots since they are so ill maintained or covered in snow that they can barely be seen.
Going back to your T6 and how it likes to groundloop, its just like any other aircraft and their idiosyncrasies. Some like to drop wings, others like to roll on their backs. Some don't like to stop once on the ground and others tend to never want to land... then decide to drop like a rock at the most inopportune moments.
Once you get the thing into the air and flying, for the most part... as I said before, up is up, down is down, left is left and right is right.
If you can't adjust to that certain aircraft type that you are flying and master those little idiosyncrasies and ass biters, then you should find and aircraft that you can manage.
As to the complexity of the aircraft, you are compare apples to oranges.
Lets compare a Piper Cub to an A320.
Getting it started and airborne, a Cub is FAR easier than an A320.
Landing an A320 on an ILS and Radar equipped runway in icing, a gusting wind and down to minimas is much easier than the basically equipped Cub.
While planes these days do everything for you, when you don't set it up properly, it can nearly become un-flyable. Older planes will keep on going in the same direction and wont care if you can't figure out what direction you want to go.
As I said earlier. Full respect to you and your incident free career which no doubt came about by a large degree of skill, and a little bit of luck... But please lay off the thought that all pilots these days are crap.
I'd like to reinforce that a lot of the rules and regs in place today are because of pilots of your generation, that didn't have your skill/luck and are no longer with us.