... but the notation that stake is anyway positively correlated with the ability to judge code quality is absurd.
But that's true for judging content too, which I just said previously. For some content, some people are better suited to judge quality than others. I don't see how this informs us on how to to use the reward pool.
I don't see why we can't simply have individuals willing to stake projects as investors put stake into those projects.
Well, that's a great idea. Go do that. In fact, why we can't simply have individuals willing to stake content as investors put stake into content production as well?
Why do any of this at all?