I am joining this conversation late. However I am a proponent of not only doing away with learning implants, but attributes and remaps also. This would mean that every character would train at 2700SP/hr from birth which would be deposited in to a SP pool that is capped at some finite number (around 1-3 mil SP ). To gain skills you would apply SP directly from the pool. This would also mean no more training queues.
There are several very nice positives to this situations:
1. No more remaps. No more attributes. Which means you can train what you want, when you want to train it, without having to worry about it not being optimal.
2. This system is very easy to understand. There is really no way for a noob to screw it up. Unlike trying to get them to understand training plans, certain skills need certain remaps, to competently fly a ship you need skills from a lot of different attributes, how often they get remaps, etc. Keeps it simple.
3. Those of us that are in the military and deploy, go on business trips or vacations, computer crashed, or for some other reason Eve isn't really available don't have to worry about switching skills as there is no more training queue and the SP goes in to a pool.
4. If the server is DDoSed you don't have a bunch of idiots trying to claim that CCP owes them SP as they keep training.
5. No more noobs fearful of losing their +3 learning implants in nullsec PvP. I know it seems petty, but it makes a difference.
6. Attributes do add choices and consequences to Eve. There is no denying that. However, those are not meaningful choices. A meaningful choices matters a great deal in your enjoyment in the game. The choice to fit a scram or a point on your frigate is meaningful. With one choice you get a kill. With the other you die. The choice to train optimally or not is, as our wonderful OP posted, benefiting those who don't really play Eve instead of those that do. The choice to enjoy the game or stay docked up safe so you can train faster should never have been a choice presented to the player. Remove it and I assure you Eve will be better for it.
