The idea of fighting all the Uril, Zur, Rafiq and other ‘near-combo’ decks (like Travis points out) is actually what is keeping me from playing commander. I have only a small collection and would love to play some pauper commander/multiplayer (there are common legends in Master’s Edition, even :P), but I know games would take 5 hours to start so I just don’t bother.

First, as a competitive format, I think commander would quickly be overrun by decks that eschewed interaction and simply focused on using the liberal tutor/fast mana allowances to power out some fairly degenerate combos even with the inherent limitation the Singleton rule places on combo. Why? Commander has no sideboard… answering combo requires maindecking situational cards like Yixlid Jailer. Further, control decks are dis-incentivized from playing bread and butter anti-combo strategies — e.g., counterspells, discard, spot removal — due to the multiplayer nature of the format. 40 life and the mid-rangey nature of aggro in the format offer significant protection from non-control decks. Are you comfortable with commander becoming a combo-heavy format or do you disagree that this would result from people playing as you envision.

Second, competitive formats require expensive cards (there’s a reason they are pricey). Think about all the opponents you face that don’t have access to dual lands. If you want to persist in thinking this is a competitive format, you probably should not be posting videos of you beating up on people playing terramorphic expanses. A small addendum to this: Consider the idea of bringing a competitive classic tournament deck to an afterschool MTG tournament. Of course the tournament is competitive, but there are functionally norms about crushing everyone with a vastly more expensive and therefor faster deck.

Third, I was under the impression that politics was one of the reasons people like the idea of commander. I see that you don’t like this, but it seems inevitable in a system where bandwagoning/alliance formation can be advantageous. Politics is inherently meta-game, as people can’t help but think that someone who was nice to them in a past game might be similarly helpful in the game about to unfold, or vice-versa. It’s almost a condition of competitive play in my book that one should not be able to gain an advantage in match 2 by sabotaging oneself in a prior match, especially where some match 2 opponents were not present to benefit in match 1.