I'm confused here..
You're saying you'd rather have a pilot that flew 1200 hours of pipeline patrol as <1000agl over someone that flew 1200hrs of what is essentially multiple mock commuter flights every day?
By that I mean multiple legs, multiple approaches, multiple flight followings/IFR flight plans, etc.
I fail to see why my flying 5 hours in a day is a bad thing?
In your mind, does only flying for 1-2 hours a day over 5 years a better way to go?
On the other hand, you have people that work as CFI's for 2-4 years that are restricted to teaching the same basic maneuvers over and over again without really ever doing any substantive cross country flights.
In my mind, flying 400-500nm per day in 3+ legs is a pretty accurate representation of what flying in the regionals/majors will look like.