Airlines arguably need the money more than the collective we do. And in the short term, minting more elites isn't going to hurt them. If each airline simply set aside an additional 10 seats per flight for "Not actually going to fly" seats linked for pricing to the actual inventory, they've created an entirely new revenue stream.

And if they have a lot of elites who have trouble getting upgrades, that forces many to simply buy F fares, adding more revenue.

True, I would certainly have preferred to simply buy my EXP status rather than invest money, time and tolerance. But I would have spent another $2K during the DEQM promotion to also buy UA 1K status.