Kalen
Re your first point on them being independent contractors. No they aren't any more, but they are being paid for making some commitments and forfeiting opportunities elsewhere. At the PGA Tour they had commitments and were stopped from taking advantage of other opportunities and all the while they weren't being paid. The PGA Tour didn't even pay them for using their image on marketing. So as I said to Tommy, if you are having to make commitments either way, choosing the option that guarantees payment makes sense.
With regards your second point on number of tournaments, initially they were only playing 8 tournaments this year IIRC. That is where the comment came from about playing a reduced schedule. Next year it is up to 14 and I suppose if they wanted they could play only 14. I'm not sure how many of them stated they were only going to play the minimum number but clearly the option is there so it isn't necessarily a bogus argument albeit the benefit of a limited schedule is reduced as they will have more tournaments that they require to play going forward.
On the OWGR ranking criteria, here's something I picked up on the wikipedia page on their technical committee which is "to devise, maintain, review, update, administer and promote the recognition of a system that fairly ranks the relative performances of male professional golfers participating in the leading golf tournaments throughout the world, taking into account all relevant factors including, amongst other matters, the date of the tournament, the prestige of the tournament, the standard of the other participants and the value of the tournament prize fund."
Given the OWGR is used by the R&A and the Masters to pick the best field for their tournaments, I imagine the criteria will either be tweaked to suit as above (more likely IMO) or that LIV will evolve their format to conform (less likely IMO).
Niall