The idea behind the CSS standards was to specifically allow the end user to override the stylesheet with their own. The intention is to lift the font sizing and scaling away from the individual tags and define them externally. Those who want to view the page in a different manner have the outlet of defining their own stylesheet for pages and by the standard the browser is supposed to allow disabling the stylesheet. So, instead of discouraging the use of CSS, your complaint is one of the reasons that stylesheets are the better way to go.

Here's the method for user defined stylesheets for [link|http://aware.hwg.org/tips/essay_kb_03.html|IE and Opera]. Netscape 6.0 allows you to override the font settings. I can't find the documentation for Mozilla, but I did see a [link|http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/mozilla.html#core|reference] that it's a bug since ignoring stylesheets is part of the CSS standard.

On a more general level, I can partially sympathize with your concern but many web authors view their craft in the same manner as printed publication. In the same sense that a newspaper or magazine does not allow you to pick and choose what font that you receive in your subscription, so too a web author is usually under the gun to provide a distinctive look and feel for their content.

Also, there are times when an application requires the use of graphical images in conjunction with text to provide the maximum information density. If you lose control over the layout of the text, then the author can make no guarantees of how that text interacts with the images (given that images are fixed size and not the subject of stylesheets).