We have to accept all EU rules but we don't have any influence over it. I'd take full membership over that any time but the politicians don't want to risk a 3rd referendum. So we're stuck between the "bark and the wood" as a Norwegian proverb goes.
The current agreements give you the freedom to renegotiate should the need arise. You can't do that when you have full membership.
In either case, changing the relationship with the EU will require negotiation, with the EU in a position of strength due, among other reasons, to the size of the single market and the awful BATNA virtually ensured by the guillotine clauses. However, full EU members looking to leave have a better negotiating position than Switzerland or EEA members.
EEA or EU members can leave any time. But when you leave, you lose access to the single market, and your economy will take a nosedive. If you're not willing to pay the price to leave the single market, you're going to have to follow EU directives and regulations. If you're going to have to follow EU directives and regulations anyway, isn't it better to at least have some say in those promulgations and insist on full EU membership?
So maybe it's better to have no deciding voice but be able to keep all the money.
The people decided in two referendums that they do not want to be in the EU, but the politicians did not accept it and created the EAA/EØS which basically puts us in EU in all but name with very limited power to influence what happens there. It was not democratically done.
I am pro EU, but it was the wrong way to do it.
Alas, it should be a democratic choice to join the EU, the vessel which decided how (referendum or parlementary method) depends entirely on the (to-be) member state.