I won't comment on that idea (it's not a bad one though).

But I do want to talk a little bit about how you get gear. It is deliberately designed to give you items that you likely wouldn't use. The concept behind it is to increase the social aspect of the Sphere by having you, the player, needing other players to complete your desired gear. While you may have an extra Academic item, the guy with the extra Domestic gear NEEDS an Academic item, and thus there is a built-in incentive to trade items. The Auction House is the friend of the Diplomat.

That being said, we haven't done as good a job on this as we had hoped, and are tweaking things to address this.

o
A