MMR and the Intrinsic Barrier to Improvement

I'm not here to argue against or for MMR (match-made-rating), I'm just going to show how MMR stalls individual gameplay improvement. The premise is: the better your opponents are, the quicker your improvement is. I believe the opposite is also true; the worse your opponents are, the slower your improvement is. The summary is at the bottom.

First, I'll explain what MMR is and how it works for those of you that don't know already. If you already understand it feel free to skip this paragraph. MMR, or match-made-rating, is a hidden nunerical value loosely based on your winrate compared to your teammates and opponents. LOL's match-making uses your MMR to determine who to put you in a game with. If you win, your MMR goes up. If you lose, your MMR goes down.

The key to improving is making mistakes until you find what works. This is what the best players do to find a "meta," and it's why we all copy their builds. THE meta only develops at the highest level of play because at that level nearly all mistakes are punished and it's generally clear what works and what doesn't.

The opposite happens in bronze, players make many mistakes that go unpunished. Players that have only played in bronze don't know what the right or wrong plays look like because, frankly at that level anything can work. These players will find it very hard to improve their gameplay without third party resources.

Say I'm bronze 5. I want to reach silver. To reach silver I have to play at a silver level. How am I supposed to know how to reach silver when all I've seen is what works in bronze 5? I have to first hit b4, see what works there. Then do the same at the next tier. And so forth, until I reach my goal. And let me tell you, what works in silver will not work in plat or even gold. I used these ranks as examples but the situation exists at every rank.

Obviously there are are benefits to this MMR system, like relatively fair matches. Is this a necessary evil or is there a better way to match ranked players?

Summary: By grouping players of similar skill together, MMR creates an environment in which poor players only have other poor players to learn from. In this environment learning and improvement are stifled and grinding becomes the norm to climb.