>And with that out of the way, yes the entire points system is a huge fucking scam and a leech on our economy. The more you "beat the system" and profit off points, the more you care about rewards programs existing at all.

I disagree. Yes, I see how they're really a scam, but I think the scam isn't quite what you think it is: the companies offering points are hoping that you won't use them. Of course, they know that people will use some of them, and that some people will maximize their use of their points, but the whole thing I think is basically trying to get people to use their card/service, but hoping they won't game the system by using all their points, maximizing their usage, etc.

If everyone stopped using the points they accrued, the companies aren't going to lower their fees and make things cheaper for people. They're already in an oligopoly position and don't need to lower fees. So anything that helps consumers make the most of these points, I think, should help reduce these companies' profits.

If everyone was really skilled at maximizing their points usage, I think the companies would have to stop offering them, or make them less valuable, so until that happens, by maximizing your usage, you're basically profiting off all the other people who are too lazy to do so, and also profiting off the companies offering these ridiculous schemes and hoping you won't use them very effectively.

I think we're in agreement about what the rewards system is. I'm just saying that the side effect of getting points-users really invested in using points is a second layer of the scam. Obviously it is good for the credit card issuers if most users don't use their points, that's free money for them.

> So anything that helps consumers make the most of these points, I think, should help reduce these companies' profits.

I mean, no - the answer isn't "try to bleed them dry by exploiting points," any more than "launch barrels of water into space" is the answer to sea level rise. Use your points while you have them, but the correct solution for societal good is to ban the whole system.

I think banning the whole system isn't going to do anything but improve profits for them (maybe; they're doing the points systems because they think it'll convince customers to use them instead of a competitor). I think if you really want to fix the problem, you need more regulation so that prices are kept low. So, for instance, for credit card points, you need regulation forcing the CC companies to lower the fees they charge to merchants, like they do in Europe.

Oh yes, I agree that regulation would need to be more robust to future exploitation. But banning the points system isn't intrinsically going to increase their profits, or they wouldn't be running it in the first place.