I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about real estate, having bought and sold numerous homes over the years (I have bought more than I have sold, much to DH's chagrin). I even took the state's real estate course just for the knowledge - with no intention of taking the licensing exam.
In my opinion, when you are paying an agent, you are not just paying for their time and materials but rather their skills and knowledge. My doctor spends 15 minutes with me and bills my insurance $500. but I appreciate that he knows a little about medicine.
One of the biggest contributions my realtor makes in my transactions (and this is regardless of which side of the transaction I am on) is figuring out the comps and helping me decide if the house is priced right. The second major contribution is making sure that the paperwork is correct and that deadlines are met.
Yes, he earns a large hourly rate if you just look at the actual time he spent meeting with me, running comps, arranging the photographer, listing in MLS, making fliers, following up on showings, negotiating the sale, arranging settlement and other tasks I am sure I have forgotten. But he erns nothing when deals fall through, or when sellers take their house off the market.
And when representing the buyers, he has it worse. How many hours conducting showing for clients who take forever to find their house or decide to give up and not buy at all.
At the end of all of this, I can see a fee structure change where the seller pays a commission (probably a percentage but possibly a flat fee) only to the selling agent and the buyers pay a flat fee to a buyers agent. And then I can see that evolving to selling agent offering incentives or bonuses to whomever brings them buyer, sort of like tipping out the bar back. And knowing that they will be tipping out part of their commission, they would set their own commission higher to reflect that and one day we will have a system where the seller pays a percentage, let's say 6% to the selling agent and the selling agent splits that with the buyers agent, maybe they will do a 3/3% split.
Oh, and BTW, as a buyer, if I plan on buying your $500,000 house and I know I have to pay my buyers agent 3% for his services, I will offer you $485,000 and (assuming you are paying your agent 3%) you will net the same $470k that you would net now, paying 6% commission.