Ok, so explain refining to me

As a note before hand, I have played that game through twice so I know ins and outs of it, but stick with me here.

I like the idea of the refinement system. Fire becomes no longer useful after a while, so why not put those to use by making them into Firas. Makes sense right? But then things get odd...

I was flipping through my FFVIII strategy guide and noticed this:
So let's say I have some Str Ups lying around. I could use them on a character, but with all the party switching that goes on, I feel it would be more useful to turn two of them into a Str-J scroll. Well, it turns out that I have my GFs set up so all my characters can already junction to strength, so I decide to bunch 10 of them and turn them into a Power Wrist. Str + 40% will really beef up my character. But then I notice that I can get a Hyper Wrist for Str + 60% by refining 10 Power Wrists. Great, makes my character even stronger! But what's this? 10 Hyper Wrists refine into a Str Up? So if my basic math is correct, that means that if I put in a lot of time and effort, I can refine 2000 Str Ups into a Str Up! How does that make sense? So Str Up is at the same time half as valuable as a Str-J scroll and 1000 more valuable...

your math is correct but think of it this way spend the time and effort into getting the hyper wrists and equip 2 to each character as well as strength up and str j and you've got some kick ass characters

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Ok, so explain refining to me

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Make me.

I'd say it's either made like that for convenience, or if it has a logical explanation (and this is just me theorising):

a) that a lot of the ~SPIRITUAL POWER~ is lost in the refining process. Think of it like energy in the real world. The sun lets out massive amounts of energy. We can only collect a minuscule fraction of that energy, and to gather enough of that energy to create another sun would be impossible, because so much of the sun's energy goes to waste. Bit of an extreme example, but you get the point.

b) trading theory. Even FF itself works as an example here, buy 10 potions and sell them again, and you can only buy 5 potions with the money you got back. It's to prevent you from profiteering on simple merchant processes.

It's probably just convenience though.