Yeah they are getting greedy (20 BTC for a listing is ridiculous).  But technically they didn't change anything. 

They lowered the bids to 1 from 5 per hour
They raised the buy price by 5 times. 

So less votes, same net cost.  Doing this the right way by voting with our community is always going to be harder than a big IPO raise and paying for the top spot (currenlty 20 BTC costwise).

That said, I think we get a lot of value from building our votes with a community even if it takes a little longer than a "IPO."

Plus I think as we've moved up MintPal, we've been getting higher prices, more volume, etc.  So, MintPal is an endgame, but there is value in the build up too..