"My basic argument with those I have respect for here is that I don't believe the tradition is alive, but I do believe that the old forms are important and viable enough to create new songs using them as a pattern.
Whether they become folk songs is immaterial really - nobody ever set out to write folk songs - the idea is ludicrous.
People wrote songs to capture what was happening around them - what made them laugh, or what made them angry, or sad..... loss, achievement, death, birth...whatever.
They became folk songs because they were memorable and because they were universal enough to take root wherever they landed - not the introspective, navel gazing, angst-filled singer-songwriter stuff that masquerades as folk-song now."

Totally agree with all of that, and if I am not mistaken that is what you contended from the outset.

The stuff you refer to in your last sentence quoted above are mostly written with high expectation that they become a commercial success - If they do they become "pop" songs - If they don't they are labelled and marketed by the music industry as "folk", when of course they ain't.