Good ethical SEO is about getting sites to rank for terms that they deserve to rank for because the site is relevant, and searchers will be interested in using/buying from/contacting the site that they click on in the SERP.

In my opinion, the problem with all this “SEO is Evil,” “SEO Resistant Search,” etc. is the view of SEO by people who aren’t directly involved in the field. It seems like the general outsider’s view of SEO has gone from “optimizing for search engines” to “manipulating search engines.”

While it is true that there are people who exploit search engines for their personal monetary gain (but let’s be honest, you can find exploitative/manipulative companies & individuals in any industry), all of the “experts” that are speaking out against the SEO industry need to realize that most of the major firms, as you put it, are simply giving “the search engines what they want.” For example, if large, well-known brands simply ignored search engine marketing, it would probably be harder to find many of them, which would actually be detrimental to the user’s experience.