When you try to control the market by imposing artificial rules & regulations you will initially find people trying to find ways around the rules, some legal, some illegal and some questionable practices somewhere between the two.
We've seen players' incomes being boosted with cars, houses or by their wives being employed in non-jobs at vastly inflated salaries and we've seen payments to players being deferred until the following season or later. So you think up more rules until eventually you've got it all buttoned down and think you've got a watertight system until the players realise that there's a whole world out there that doesn't have to abide by the rules you've made up for your tiny corner of it and they move off to try their hand at the sport in another country that will pay them more, or another sport altogether. Its a sort of sporting version of communism and it just doesn't work. Comparisons with the NRL are of limited help because RL in Australia is the national sport and here its a minority pastime.
I'd have some minimum criteria surrounding facilities and youth programs/reserve grade teams to prevent clubs simply throwing money at short term success to the detriment of the develpoment of the game but then I'd leave the rest of the spending to the club. If they made bad decisions and blew all their cash 'living the dream' like LUFC did they can suffer the consequences and someone else can take their place.

If you don't link it to tangibles like fan revenue, youmay as well just doaway with the cap,as rich owners will simply buy trophies......as I said, Viable Business plans, not projections and the like.

On Farrell being well regarded - so is Mick Ford, Neil Kelly etc they hardly starred in RL and if they could get a job in RL they would be back in a shot. Noble is another one - no one in RL wants to give him a job but he can get work in RU.

England have never had a foreign coach so Lancaster was not really competing with Mallet as you well know. You mentioned Leeds struggling the point of a good coach is to get the best out of the players - can you really say that about Lancaster's time at Leeds?

The point about Farrell was would he be any good in RL - the answer to that is no - he speed of thought is too slow - in RL he would be much closer to the line his decision making would have to quicken considerably also how would he defend against big centres two/three times in a set!!

Greater spread - if one owner goes he takes it all - it is unlikely you whole crowd would go on mass. Most clubs will have fans who have been going considerably longer than any of the owners have owned the club.

True but you lose 2000 fans and your losses become just as great as most owners (London aside) are putting in each year, and it's not unheard of to have avg attendance fluctuations of 2000 a season depending on performance.

gutterfax's scenario also doesn't take into account expense. One club could have 4mill income and be more profitable than a club with 5 mill income depending on how much they are spending on ground hire, coaches, directors scouting trips to Australia etc.