Zordon,
I sympathaize with much of what you say, and can easily see things from your perspective. However, it is important to make one distinction here. Cadets are apprentices. They have been fast tracked into a part of the industry that traditionally wouldn't (and still largely doesn't) normally host pilots with such low levels of experience. Therefore the supply & demand rewards of the labour market, should not be (but usually are) confused with those that apply to experienced first officers in these seats.
Just as in your industry, it would not be uncommon to have 25 well qualified (and short-listable) candidates for every right seat vacancy. In fact the numbers are usually much higher than that. Here I am not talking about candidates with a few hundred hours, but those with thousands of hours including medium/heavy jet transport experience. This includes applicants from domestic and foreign airlines as well as military career changers.
You cannot equate an apprenticeship in that seat with an experenced pilot in that seat, although the former will eventually become the latter. Without any cost and flexibility benefit to the airline there would be no reason to provide such apprenticeships, and the opportunities afforded by them would simply evaporate.
Whilst I am not advocating or defending flexicrew, the fact (as you acknowledge) that "the world caved in," placed a set of realities on both the FTO and Customer that ensured something was salvaged from this collapse. The option would simply have been nothing at all! Many well established FTO's lost their airline customers and in turn their respective cadet programmes. This one managed to keep the throughput alive albeit on significantly reduced T&C's to those that had existed previously. Despite this, the lack of end user demand simply caused supply to build up. Until the beginning of this year hold pools of prospective cadets were finding people swimming for up to a year or more.
As other airline cadet programmes start to come back on stream, so the scope of opportunities improves. Many easyjet cadets (or those still on flexicrew contracts,) have found opportunities with such airlines. In other words as they emerge from their apprenticeships, so the basic laws of supply and demand start to become a factor again.
Hopefully your son is able to benefit from either new opportunities, or as his apprenticeship period ends, is able to benefit from better terms & conditions where he is. Either way, the future is a lot brighter than the alternative would have been, in that he has been able to fulfill all of the early stages of his fast track apprenticeship.
That you and your wife are still having to support him, is little different from parents who also suppport their offspring through education, training and apprenticeships in many other industries and professions. Which is again why I say that is important to make the distinction.