Great post, OP. In good economy times, when every passenger is an elite, then there is no elite. Back in 2000s, people raved about being in 1MMs as major milestone. Nowadays, lot more people are in MM levels. I am not saying everybody would be 4MM GS, but no doubt there will be more 2MMs, 3MMs, and then 4MMs. It is a great marketing strategy by UA to hook us in. There will be a balancing point where UA thinks there are two many people who can spend that much for traveling or there are too many GSs. When that happens, I don't really know if GS benefits would stay the same.

If I were on your shoes I would probably have tried to do the same. It's still a long way to go for me, however.

I picked #1 because I had status with AA, AS, and DL. I am now focused on AA, UA, and AS and tried to push the MM status with AA and UA at the same time. Due to the frequency to HKG, OneWorld is important to me.