Of course that takes a lot of training, where you can control the situation to give the dog a fake choice (by leashing him) and/or ensure the bad choice is the right amount less awesome than the treat.

I am not advocating against negative reinforcement here. It can help build good habits by steering the dog towards the good choice and preventing the bad one. I'm just disagreeing with the notion that the end result should be the dog deciding based on expected reward and punishment.

(I know this is quite idealistic.)

There have to be consequences to choosing to blow off a command.

You _can_ definitely use positive only training to teach an alternate behavior (e.g. recall or distance down) and proof it under progressively more difficult scenarios (distance/duration/distractions), backing up every time the dog makes a mistake. Until that command is such a strong habit that the dog will reliably do the behavior on cue. And in the meantime prevent the bad behavior (with a leash) to prevent ingraining the undesired behavior.

Not saying negative reinforcement _should_ not be used (it may be more effective, and may even be the difference between achieving or not achieving the desired behavior with the amount of effort any particular trainer can put in). Just that it's not as absolute as you say.