Frankly, I agree. I’m perhaps biased because of Italian, but I think etymology doesn’t belong to the spelling; a consistent and dialect-agnostic set of rules that allows you to predict how to spell and pronounce a word is far more important.

In special I never understood why English obtusely sticks to the double spelling standard, native (as in /gɪf/) vs. Romance+Classical (as in /dʒɪf/).