Why do you care about the bloat of the JVM? Memory is cheap.
The Java libraries are rather extensive. I would rather have too much than too little.
Static typing is a big win, particularly if you don't have to declare everything (Scala has local type inference).
Sure, there are lots of bright people using Python. But Scala is a better language and has bright users also.
If you are unfamiliar with Scala, take a look at this:
Re:Python 3000 Alpha 1 Released
by menloparkbum on Friday August 31, 2007 @10:52PM
(#49132)
It is as if someone took all the things that are gross about Java, CAML, and Smalltalk, and combined them into a single language.
It isn't clear to me why Scala is obviously better than Python as you imply.