Armchair critic: just how wide is this 'advice gap'?

There is plenty of noise just now about how the RDR has trimmed adviser numbers and created the orphaned client phenomenon. But the importance of this short-term drop is being way overdone - the advisers who fell off the list post-RDR were not usually fully occupied and most of those remaining have normally got enough capacity to pick up any slack from those who exited. The really big contrast is between the current modest numbers of authorised advisers and the comparatively vast legions of salesmen who used to roam the streets rewarded by high indemnity commission and funded by scary...