While this structure definitely works to get us through most of our work, is this really the right way forward? If people at the Saleforce Foundation are pouring time and energy into developing something for the greater good, wouldn't it be great if we are assured that their focus is on the right vision?
Regarding affiliations, I don't think the Affiliation object is the right vision.
Here's a thought: Contacts were originally defined as people of interest related to an organization. Somehow, we diverged from this model by redefining contacts as people with a primary connection to a specific organization via the Lookup(Account) field. What's the difference, you ask? The difference is that in the original definition, a Contact record is the link between a person and an account; in the world with Affiliation as a junction between Contact and Account, we've redefined a Contact as the person, which it was never meant to be.
So, by introducing the Affiliation object, we've bastardized the idea of a "contact". How do we pick which Contact record stays with its account? How do we choose between a creating new Contact record and creating an Affiliation record? Is it better to have my Contact record as a child of account A with an affiliation to account B, or the other way around?
The answer: For orgs that want to map out people's relationships to different Account records, introduce the Person object. Then, link every Contact record to the appropriate Person record, and you have the magic sauce that paints the real picture of a person and his or her affiliations.
