I mostly agree with you except on a couple points. Acid in the oil is gonna get burned up by blowby, just like the oil does, so that's not a huge issue.
Oil changes really aren't that cheap. For my car, a GM, an oil change is about $40-80 because it requires the Dexos high-quality oil.
I like my GM oil life monitor quite a bit. It predicts ~7500-mile oil change intervals for me. I guess the first versions of the product weren't conservative enough and they were predicting too many 10k+ intervals. I'm looking forward to having some oil analyses done to confirm that my typical 6,000-mile interval is fine.
And I understand that 10k+ intervals in Europe are kind of the norm. Obviously that requires very good, high-quality synthetics.
Now imagine that, say, GM required the best oil in their engines, like Amsoil or M1 Extended. That's good for at least 10k miles for almost any driver. Combine that with an oil life monitor and a filter change and I bet gentle drivers like myself would be good for 20k miles.
Now a step further... Imagine Jiffy Lube tested your oil instead of changing it automatically. That would be cool, right?
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