I'm on record: I think it was a miss to bend toward the US system and not adopt the competition-based system of the UK, Australia, and elsewhere in the WHS.
The two point system (course rating and slope rating) is much superior to the one point system that the UK used to use (just a course rating - standard scratch score). The US system is also much faster to catch up to a change in ability than the UK system was. I think the competition-based system has its merits, but it's very difficult for people who are not members of a club, which makes that not really workable in the US. For its sins, I think the WHS is a pretty good system. I think its biggest issue is the difference between the handicaps it produces and the expectations of the people who get those handicaps.
Definitely agree on the merits of using rating + slope. My statement there is strictly based on the use of comp rounds.
And I totally get the immediate reaction of "Courses in the US don't offer competitions, particularly on the public side, and therefore comp-based posting wouldn't work here." But I think that's shortsighted - it assumes that if you put a "comp rounds only" rule in place, that nothing else would change. I think it's a shortcoming of US golf that competition is so hard to find if you're a public course player, while 6 hour rounds on courses full of drunk yahoos are so easy to find. I would LOVE it if, in my city, the average local public course offered one or two comp days a month, requiring a handicap for entry, and otherwise making friendly competition readily available to anyone. It's not a strength of our golf culture that the average public golf experience is so transactional and anti-communal. I can't think of a better, realistic catalyst that could've made an impact so quickly.