Tim, again, I'm not saying we should eliminate the club system. Quite the opposite. When I say I prefer golf in Scotland, it is exactly because I prefer the club system to the pay-per-round system, because a club has -- well, should have -- more of an interest in good golf than on profit (obviously this is complicated, but I'd hope my point is generally accepted).
Within that system, like the university system, I don't think everyone can be a member of every club. However, as someone who spent a lot of time in academia, the universities host many, many, many events open to the public. During my time at Boston University, I went to many lectures and colloquia at Harvard and MIT, because the universities all tried to be as open to the public as was practicable.
I'm simply arguing that if private clubs opened themselves up to let people play occationally it would be good for golf culture. Beyond the reasons discussed before, I'll add another:
I'd hope many in these forums would agree that America suffers from card-and-pencil play. This obsession with stroke-play affects everything from significantly higher maintenance costs, to just the psychological effect that a surprising amount of people are disappointed that they won't beat their handicap the vast majority of the time.
The club system comes with clubs' preferred games. Some play match play, foursomes, fourball, stableford etc., but only at a club can one be expected to participate in such non-standard games. Just the framing of the relationship reflects this. A pay-per-round course is transactional, a business that asks you to not play your preferred game is a bad business. A visit to a club is almost like visiting someone else's home, they don't actually need your business at all, you're a guest. You're not going to have dinner at someone's house and complain about the choice of cuisine (except maybe someone like Jay Rayner). If people play at a match play club, I suspect a majority of those visitors will decide to play match play, even without prompting.
If visiting clubs were even an occasional occurrence for most active players, I suspect that the obsession with stroke play would wane significantly, and align closer to the more diverse style of play in Scotland. I suspect this because it primes people with culturally heterogeneous experiences, which forces them to consider golf as something more than the score at the bottom of their card. Instead of "this is what the pros play, so this is what we play," people might decide they prefer to play like they do at a club they really enjoy or think highly of.