I totally see what you are saying ad, and to some extent I agree. But as always, there are more than one side to a coin. As for Norwegian I can only say I flew with VERY few pilots who had not been somewhere else before... Either turboprop, instructing or, for the vast majority, Ryanair. I guess it depends on the base, but as for LGW the average age or experience in the flightdeck was more than the industry standard. We are talking 10-20+ years in the bizz. Upgrades were for those who had 4000 hours or more and I saw very very few actually get throught the process of upgrading compared to how many who tried. I guess you have to have a certain standard when you are dealing with extreme conditions in scandinavia all the time.
With regards to how this "spiral" all began, you have to remember that we have had a whole generation of pilots finishing either during the crisis of 2008 or in the years thereafter. As you know, the amount of available jobs went to virtually zero for many many years. And with no experience, there was only one show in town - Ryanair. With that said, I know plenty of people who are still happy in Ryanair (From what I understand it depends very much on the base). At the time you could have been a reincarnation of Charles Lindberg and still be unable to land a job. People had/and still have bills to pay and after 6 monhts without a job you have to do something! Not everybody has rich parents or a friendly bank to provide a safetynet.
This time around you will see exactly the same! People need food on the table and from the looks of it, there will be even less choice on the market. So when you say people have to choose carefully next time they look for another job, I see what you are saying, but it's a comment formed from a person with more choice and less risk than the majority. We also have to remember that not all pilots in Europe live (or want to live) in the UK and as such have less of a desire to try their luck with it's airlines.
The situation becomes more and more complex each and every single day at the moment and if we continue like this we will likely see pilots in the legacy airlines compromise on decades of union work in order to pay the bills. We all have a breaking point - Even those who hide behind their respectable airlines cash-reserves pointing fingers. I personally hope we see more approvals of state loans to airlines big and small. Sometimes that little bit of extra fuel (time) makes a huge difference when the storms are building up in order to make a "safe landing"....