US PTO abandoning examination?

Dennis Crouch has a good analysis of US Design Patent allowance rates - it makes cheerful reading after all that depressing business method stuff, anyway. His conclusion? "our design patent system is approaching a registration system". Well well ... just as they are gearing up to adoption of the (registration oriented) Hague Agreement. Will anyone, anywhere search designs for prior art if the US cease to do so? Would it be such a bad thing?