Does an instructor also need all this "rating" stuff? Otherwise, how do you find an instructor who is qualified to qualify you?
Maybe you have been living with the system so long you cannot see the ridiculous efforts you have to put into it. I could not imagine the problems it would cause me. I am a free-lance CFI and love the ability to fly and teach new airplane types, floats, conventional, skis, you name it. If I had to be "rated" before I could do this I would have to give it up. I am in the CAP and they have a similar "rating' system, after 5 years I am only up to 80 percent of the types we have here in Alaska. I have to do separate check rides to be qualified on floats, amphibs, skis etc. I am qualified for example on the C206 amphib, and the C185 floats, but not the C206 floats or the C185 amphibs, and to get those "ratings" I have to find an instructor who is suitably "rated". An impossible task. I am always glad that GA does not have those rules and if I ever came back to fly in Aus (I started there many years ago) I am sure I would go mad with the seemingly unending and completely pointless rules you have become accustomed to. Not just the ratings, but the instrument (I see you have IR for single and multi? Do you also have them for glass and conventional instruments? What about separate ratings for King and Collins equipment? Or for HSI/DG? Turn Coordinator/T&B? Who decides this garbage?), night, various levels of instructor and the like.
Statistics show all this complication does not improve safety, and I might be able to make a case that it actually reduces safety because it prevents pilots from developing skills or gaining experience, two areas that desperately need attention.
When are you going to cry "Enough?"