I suppose the winning penalties issue is more about tactics and perhaps playing the ref? I am also curious whether it has been seriously considered having the ref put the ball into the scrum to avoid the no.9 feeding it to his side? (As he seems to when you watch matches on TV). Might this create a better contest for the ball or is there a reason for not doing it this way?
The use of the scrum to milk penalties is an unintended consequence of the laws as they are.
Going back 30-odd years, and scrums formed quickly and without fuss, the ball was in and usually out on a second or so; with about an 80% retention rate for the side putting in. Then professionalism and a different way of scrummaging came along (the hit - which is pushing before the ball is in, and illegal - but ignored and now codified). Some scrum offences are considered accidental/mild/not-dangerous and result in a free-kick; whilst others are considered deliberate/more-severe/dangerous, and result in a penalty; some of which are basically the result as not being as good as your opponent (or more specifically, not being as good, but refusing to admit it and step backwards - front-rowers are basically macho man-children
). There is a further issue that every scrum has so much cheating going on that no ref could ever see everything; especially as most refs come from the backs, not forwardsh; so they often have difficutly getting decisions actually correct. Consequently to this, teams cheat ever more in the hopes that they "earn" a penalty either by dominating and getting the rub of the green, or by cheating in such a way that it looks like the other guy's fault, or simply taking their chance as the ref metaphorically tosses a coin to decide who he's going to penalise this time.
As for the ref feeding into the scrum - this debate has a long and glorious history of a good 15-20 years of being brought up on fan forums - even trialled once IIRC.
The trouble is that feeding is actually easy to enforce, and it tends to be in the amateur game; but the pro.s don't want it; neither coaches, players or ref's supervisors. Basically, the pro.s would rather set up knowing what's likely to happen than to introduce the uncertainty of fair competition - IMO largely as it keeps control with the coach, rather than the players - so much easier to create scripts for more predicatble parts of play.
Basically, in the professional game, the fans are the only people who want the ball fed straight; so it's not going to be.