Efficient Markets

I came across a thought provoking post on the excellent PFblog. The author was talking about ordering TiVo, and mentioned the TiVo rewards program, you know, one of those earn points and get stuff programs. Points can be earned by referring friends to TiVo, and the twist is that people are offering money on eBay for you to get TiVo, and name them as the refer-er so they can earn points. I haven't made an exhaustive analysis of this, but a quick and dirty once over makes it look like the going rate is $25-35 USD for a referral. This gets one 5000 points in the TiVo rewards program. In the program one can get a Linksys USB100TX that works with a TiVo for 4500 points. This retails for about $30 or so, or about par--i.e. item costs the same as what somebody is willing to pay for the points on ebay. As you move up the scale, one can get an 20G Apple iPod for 2000 points--this works out to be about $140 bucks for a $250-300 item.
I love markets.