To your point about this being a "virtually free service"....BS. 2% is *double* the pool standard for profit. The fact that this *seems* low to you is irrelevant.
You forget trading alts for BTC and exchange fees.
Not really. There are plenty of pools out there that actually charge no fee at all, and the rest of the transaction fees can easily total to <1%.
I'm not saying it's expensive, but to call it virtually free is just flat wrong. 2% isn't much overall, but perspective and opportunity cost need to play a role in where to point your hashes to.