I think point-to-point is supposed to be the most efficient provided you accurately match airplanes to the routes people want to fly.

Hub flying is useful for folks that want to go from one small city to another; on a given day there might be two people who want to fly from Providence, RI to San Antonio, TX so it's not viable to fly a plane between them, but if you route them via Philadelphia, PVD-PHL-SAT, you can accommodate them with limited extra distance or extra time and also accommodate people wanting to travel PVD-PHL and PVD-PHL-SYR, etc.

Once you start working in units of "planeloads" instead of "people", point-to-point flying is likely going to be more efficient in terms of time, distance, cost, etc...