Rec ball and travel ball can and should co-exist.
Comparing them is apples and oranges IMO.
Like 20Dad said rec ball for the better players is really about allstar season. Regular season is for the kids who like baseball but don't have the abilities to play all stars. The highlight of their season is getting an important hit, making the playoffs and winning the league championship. Their was nothing more gratifing for me than to see a below average kid, who tried hard, to get that key hit or make a nice play in the field and then walk off the fiels smiling ear to ear. That kid may like the game as much as the best all star or travel kid, but just doesn't have the talent.
The better player should, at some point, go to travel ball. In our area it seems to break down this way. In larger towns the kids started with rec and usually stayed to at least 12yo. With the larger towns you have a better pool of talent so there was some competition amongst the all star players and the overall quality was exceptable until 12. In the smaller towns the kids seem to go to travel by 9 -10 yo because the talent just wasn't there. I think alot of the travel teams started, in my area, 5-10 years ago were by dads in smaller towns. This makes sense to me.
We all better hope rec/town baseball doesn't go away. IMO if it does so do alot of future MLB fans who ultimately pay the huge salaries some of us are chasing.