haughtney1, whilst I agree with you in many respects, it will take more than a bulletin board to bring the entire wannabe pilot community together and say - "WE WILL NOT PAY FOR TYPE RATINGS" to actually stop it happening. Until you can guarantee that not a single wannabe will pay for a type rating, forcing the airlines (even the lo-cos) to pay for it, then people will continue to prostitute themselves because they are looking after number one! Its dog eat dog my friend, and while I'd like to think of a world where no wannabe would ever agree to buying a type rating, it aint ever gonna happen, in fact the situation will only get worse as you say.
I don't want to pay for a rating, but when I complete my training (which I have been lucky enough to have all the liquid cash to do) and no one is hiring without a type-rating, or they are, but you have to have considerable luck and ideally a contact within, then, yes...I will be fuding my own type-rating no doubt, as I'll be in a financial position to do so, and hell, i'm not gonna watch my ATPL lapse into oblivion (where getting a job will be even tougher) when I can just it over and done with, buy the rating, take the hit and make it up in the years that I'll have doing what I set out to do.
I'm 25, if I make it by 27/28, then I'll still have over 30 years of flying to recoup and enjoy my life.