One of the problems is also that power has become much more powerful in the sense that a few years ago, Goblins for example was a very viable deck. Sligh was a very viable deck, black weenie (with hymns, spectres and negators, remember them??) was a viable deck. Now if you play goblins or sligh you will get an asskicking 6 rounds in a row. Because the format keeps getting faster it is even more important to have power pieces because they provide that speed boost no other cards in the game can give you (besides maybe mishra's factory but noone plays stax without the power anyway..). Now if i want to play a real deck it would be ichorid because 4 bazaars even though they are ~800€ (which is over half of a monthly wage!!), is still alot cheaper than the power9+vault. Even if you want to construct a decent non-powered fish deck you still need to dish out several hundreds of dollars just for the dual/fetch lands. I own two mana drains if i sold them i could buy the most expensive legacy deck, and drain isn't even considered an expensive card. You people must shit money or something.
The expense of power is why I propose a two-teir system that allows for proxies but provides incentive for buying actual power.
I question your suggestion that you coudl buy the most expensive legacy deck for the price of two mana drains. The last time I went to a legacy event there were multiple decks running 10 or so duals, including 4 underground Seas. Even a cheep sea in so-so condiion costs over $50 at this point, and drains are easy to find for $100.00, so the drains woudl covers the Seas and nothing more. With the current situation, and even with only 10 proxies for Vintage but no proxies for most legacy events, legacy is more expensive than Vintage, not less.
