No. If "My Cards" is to be a viable option, and not just Super Sealed, there has to be a way to acquire cards to build decent decks. Trading is complicated and would lead to puppet accounts, so that means buying singles.
This has been a fascinating study in economic markets. I believe the economic problem is not buying singles. It's being able to sell singles for really high prices, and really high buy prices. If the cost of a booster pack is 10 gold, which was about US$3 in real life, the cost of the most expensive rare should never be above 500 gold, the equivalent of US$150. In Magic, Jace the Mind Sculptor costs about $100, and he's a relatively better card than anything in LotR.
As others have mentioned, the foil option also acts as a card sink. If I recall, hsiale and MarcinS were terrified of inflation and made a lot of card sinks. The December 2012 price reset was supposed to fix things, but not having a price cap led to scarce lottery tickets.