Why don't you quit and go to endeavor since you feel like telling everyone else they should look elsewhere? You will make more there first year than you will as a captain here. And frankly I don't think you will need to worry about captain pay right now anyway. Not if you act in real life like you do on the internets.

As for flying being a hobby...everyone has their reason for flying. This has been debated as nauseum. Anyone who does it "for fun" and not for the money is perhaps going to try harder than a guy who is burned out and doesn't want to be there. I do better at everything when I enjoy what I'm doing. If there are a few people who aren't relying on the paycheck to feed their family, and/or who made enough money in a previous career, it won't affect the industry one bit. I guarantee less than 10% of the newhires (prob less than 1%) have tons of money stashed away and are doing this as a hobby. There are no discriminating reasons why or why not to be a professional pilot. That's the beauty of free market (kind of) capitalism. If 50,000 people in the US decided they wanted to retire wealthy from business and fly planes around for free, we would have to find something else to do.

The fact is people who do this for fun aren't going to put up with Mesa for long and will go elsewhere or go back to flying a cirrus for fun, creating another vacancy and training cost for Mesa, which nullifies the "they are filling seats and thusly reducing our leverage" argument. Supply and demand rules. If people are coming here, Mesa is doing something right. Faulting individuals for showing up (just like you) is the wrong way to go about trying to make your life better. Quitting altogether or volunteering for the union to try to negotiate better are more productive ideas.

And as for training standards and old people who only have 1500 hours in a Cessna over a 20 year period being less competent and less able to absorb/keep up with the 121 environment standards, that's a training department problem, not a newhire/Internet forum problem. If they don't meet standards, they shouldn't make it to the line. That includes IOE, even if they make it thru the checkride. I understand "standards" flex with an airline's needs, but we have all walks of life struggling in initial and IOE (and on the line). If you have problems with someone you are flying with, pro standards and perhaps chief pilots should be involved. If you find yourself as a line captain flying with someone of any age/experience who you have to teach a lot to, and you fail to bring it up to the union/company, you are the problem, not the newhire who is just trying to fly and do his job.