I dont disagree with it being a misguided pursuit but the goal or bar isnt generally set by them and I feel like most pilots (and people in general) chase the hours in order to fulfill FAA, insurance or Employer requirements. I dont think anyone would really care what they log if it werent for that... I know plenty of people who have stopped logging complex, high performance, tailwheel and other endorsement type times except for currency because they have surpassed the number of hours required to no longer be hassled by the insurance or FAA or employers. Same goes for other "logged" activities I participate in such as skydiving and scuba diving.
Its not just a pilot issue either as I experience it regularly in IT too. Arguably, we've developed knowledge based certifications to help vet and gauge experience but when an employer requires an employee to obtain a certificate they wouldnt have sought on their own by tying it to a promotion or raise, the employee will obtain the certificate in the quickest, cheapest and easiest manner possible and as a result there are a huge number of paper tigers out there without the experience or knowledge the certificate is supposed to represent so we're stuck again using a measure of time. Still when I conduct technical hiring interviews Im always struck by how much people play up their time in a role... I would hire someone with 3 years of clearly varied experience over a person person with 10 years of experience in the same job (i.e. 1 year of experience 10 times over) any day.
Similarly, I would feel more comfortable getting in the plane with a pilot who went that extra mile to practice flying actual IFR with a rated co-pilot to be legal and help them stay safe than I would with a pilot with an equal amount of actual instrument time done entirely solo or with non-pilots. Or perhaps as a starker contrast someone with 30 hours of xc time going to 25 different locations or using 25 different routes vs someone with 50 hours xc time going to the same 5 places using the same 5 routes.
The FAA's goal is to create skilled and competent pilots with the experience and decision making ability necessary to not put the rest of us at risk. Unfortunately, as flawed as it is, nobody has come up with a better way of measuring experience except by "time" and while FAA wants Pilots to show good ADM it stacks the deck in favor of the pilot who practices in the less safe environment of single pilot IFR, is more willing to blur the lines and log time that might have been more questionable or just stick to the letter of the law and do it all simulated vs the pilot who gains the best actual real world experience in a completely safe manner but sticks to the letter of the law when it comes to logging and thus cant receive credit for it. The FAA's rules often throw the pilot out with the bathwater thus contributing to the pursuit of hours and not experience as a goal.
I take similar issue with the long XC required for commercial. I feel its unrealistic that a pilot is going to fly 250+NM with just themselves and believe it would be consistent with the intent of the regulation to get you out of your comfort zone and the real world to allow passengers; particularly a fellow pilot who, knowing the purpose of the flight, could refuse to assist the pilot and even act as a purposeful distraction during the flight. It would then make the regulation more consistent with other cross countries that arent required to be solo and can be conducted as a single loop as one pilot could fly the 250nm between 2 of 3 points/300 nm total distance between all 3 points on an outbound leg and let the other pilot fly the return leg instead of forcing one pilot to fly and shoulder the cost of a 500+nm roundtrip which might cause said pilot to make some questionable decisions thinking with their wallet instead of their head. The second pilot could then act as a check & balance against such a decision when both pilots encounter and weigh an inflight go/no-go situation 100+nm from the home airport.
In the end the FAR's are what they are and there's not much that can be done about it. Unfortunately that's what happens when you have a bunch of bereaucrats trying to write legalese in an effort to protect the general public by regulating and removing stupidity from the cockpit due to the continual demise of what used to be called common sense, though its not so "common" anymore.
