lin821's message was in response to mooper, but I want to try to answer as a sympathist to mooper's comment.

1. I don't think you should feel obligated to start a competitor, but rather just answer the question: what is impeding the formation of a competitor? You may find a systemic problem more deserving of discussion and your "outrageous" label, or you may find an interesting business opportunity also more worthy of discussion, or, more likely, you'll probably identify holes in your knowledge about the situation and identify some questions worth asking.

2. I do not see how it is outrageous when I am offered the option to buy a hamburger expensively.

3. I might even knowingly buy a hamburger expensively just because the price difference exceeds the value of time I would otherwise spend searching for a cheaper burger. Even in that case, the existence of the additional expensive hamburger stand improves my options.

4. However, the buyer information situation is not really so bad with points.com as there are times when trading on points.com really is the best available option, typically when you have some points in a program that you think you'll never otherwise use and you were otherwise going to buy points even more expensively to top up to an award in a different program.