I'm not sure I agree at all. The hotels that give miles tend to be pretty pricey, at least compared to my usual travel patterns. Unless you want to get into manufactured spending with gift cards, what can you really shop for? At least for me - $1K at Best Buy every few years when I want to replace a hi-fi component. If I choose to, I can buy some housewares and such at Walmart. You can't get points for theater or opera tickets, or gasoline, or service on your car. Maybe by "shopping" you meant credit card points, but those come at a cost; it's trivial to get a 2% cashback card, so every 1000LP's and RDM's costs you $20.

Now personally, I'd rather walk than fly without at least MCE. And I do kind of like the new system because I can at least MS my way to gold if I decide to stop flying so much, and then I'll get MCE for free at T-24 (right?).

But no, Gold is not exactly the cat's meow.