Remember, the most important counterpoint here is that in the end, the 4kids dub was terrible, and the changes were beyond annoying, but tolerable edits like these, the story was not kept intact, many changes to the plot were made, not just entire episodes, but entire story arcs were removed, these changes caused plot holes, and if the dub lasted longer, the plot holes would have become even worse.

4kids' brand of puritanism actually made One Piece a worse work of media, and the modern brand of puritanism is doing the same to other things.

I want everyone to know 4Kids wanted nothing to do with One Piece. Toei saw how popular the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh anime had become in America thanks to them and they wanted One Piece to be just as big, as they felt that english dubs of Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon hadn't reached the same level of success as the aforementioned shows. 4Kids saw One Piece and said 'No, it's too violent, too sexual, too dark…we'd have to censor and change way too much to make it acceptable to air on a kid's network or on Saturday mornings on Fox. We'd butcher it.'

However, Toei had this other show that 4Kids did want to do (I forget what it was, some magical girl series I believe) and they basically said that in order for them to do that, they had to do One Piece, so One Piece was more or less forced on 4Kids.

Rumor is they intentionally did a bad job hoping Toei would realize their mistake just take it from them, but they didn't care (apparently) and just let them do it until the contract expired.

So yeah, while the 4Kids dub of One Piece isn't good, it's not totally their fault