The implication of the way you've framed the whole endeavor is that this is a way for people to positively participate in the community.

And I think it is, but I also recognize that there's no such thing as "one size fits all". The choice of 5 SP was to come up with a least-common-denominator that is possible for most of the community. Sort of an 80/20 rule...

Another point that I neglected to mention is that - as with SPUD - if the initiative were to catch on, I'm sure we'd see people posting about their delegation decisions. And this would give crucial feedback to developers about what ideas are valuable to the community, and it would also turn into a way that people could collect rewards for their delegation decision-making.

I was never a fan of those posts with the SPUD initiative because I thought they were valueless, but in this case I think they would provide useful information.