> I guess you aren't familiar with this having been the system in most markets for decades?

Definitely not in most markets. This is very unique to the US.

Also, what's the advantage of paying someone whose goals don't quite align with yours? And isn't it a massive conflict of interest?

The system as described is nearly unique to North America. It takes a particularly distorted and unregulated market to allow this kind of anti-competitive structures to arise.

Broken systems linger despite themselves all the damn time, are you really suggesting otherwise?

your guess is incorrect