Interesting points all. It is truly a pleasure to fly YX and not have to spend precious brainpower worrying about "will I get the upgrade...did I call in time...etc etc"

If you recall (I'm not old enough--born 1963-- to remember anything but the tail end) there was a frenzy about trading stamps (S&H, Top Value, Eagle, etc) from approximately 1956 through 1970. Growing up in St. Louis the last supermarket chain stopped giving them in 1981 (National), but Famous-Barr (the big department store) gave them until 1988 or so (Eagle Stamps, actually the program was owned by May Department Stores).
Publix (big Florida supermarket chain) gave S&H until about 1990.

The craze ended with the recessions of the early 70s. Frequent flyer points are the same thing, 25 years later. In the 60s, the aspirational goods which were "sold" by the stamp companies were household things (my parents still have the picnic basket which I remember getting with them). There was a statistic that 40% of the small electric goods sold in the early 60s were distributed through trading stamp companies.

(Interestingly, Eagle Stamps, mentioned above, were a bit different--you filled a book of them and then took them to the department store (Famous-Barr) to get $3 in merchandise from them. A friend my age grew up near Cleveland where Eagle Stamps were used--the big department store (May Co) was owned by May (duh) and the redemption process was the same.

Now, with greater cultural sophistication (as well as personal income, leisure, etc) we look for travel for our "redemptions".

FF miles aren't going away unless we have a bad recession verging on depression. You can have too many toasters. I don't think you can have too much leisure travel.

JL