I am one voice in a group of voices and this is my opinion, in regards to some of the points mentioned above.
Nearly every Faction that now crops up and goes for Officialdom wants to be able to do everything/go everywhere. This includes wanting to mine a commodity somewhere and get the biggest bonus possible - why? - because we want.
Now certain Factions have a huge ZOI, others can fly Cruisers, Pirate, demand certain Goods. Some can also mine, but that must be balanced with what else they can do.
I believe that over the years too much has been given away. There are non-mining Factions with better/or equal bonuses than Mining Factions.
Some of the Non-Mining Factions have more higher bonuses that the Mining Factions and there is a huge disparity across the whole board.
In the case of the Mollys, they can Pirate, fly Cruisers and mine, but they aren't as good (nor should they be) as the Mining Faction.
BMM Un-Official gets a x3 bonus, so why should the Molly Un-Officials get x3?
As for the Maquis, they can Pirate, fly Cruisers and have no history of Mining. Even EFL and GMS only get the x2 bonus, so why should the Maquis? Even though the field is in Gallia, the best Factions for mining it are not Gallic (ALG and Junkers are good).
There has to be some kind of balance.
Is the system fair at the moment? I don't believe it is. There are some Factions that appear to have been favoured over others throughout the years. Will it become fairer - Not my decision, but one may hope so.
You will find that people will gravitate to those IDs that get the higher bonus and the better advantages, in the same way people will fly combat ships that are the best and/or have the better weapons.
The long and short of it is, life isn't fair (it is a female dog), but we try to look at Requests from all angles and try (that being the optimum word) to make it fair for all.
It would be nice to be able to do everything, be everywhere, but sometimes people need to take a step back and think "Am I being too greedy?"
'I would like to be half as clever as some people like to believe they are' Life is full of disappointments, it is how we handle them that helps to define us, as a person