You aren’t crippling your character, you choose how you prefer to play the game: always optimal or not (just like you choose SC vs HC - it’s again a gameplay style choice).
And it being permanent is only in effect while the Season lasts - in the new Season you’ll again start with the loot bonus. For NS the loot penalty could be removed on each new Season’s start.
It’s clear that one or the other respec extreme locks particular gameplay type. Free respec with loot penalty doesn’t lock any gameplay, instead it even makes it so that you can experience both types of gameplay (like doing HC in early Season, realizing it’s hard at some point and you’ll die, and switching your character to SC).