Selkirk, you have put forth some very interesting ideas that may have a great deal of merit. This goes back to looking for the real causes of the "sandbox". If the "sandbox is completely arbitrary and applied against a site primarily because of the site's age, then there is nothing one can do, but wait it out. For this reason I look at the traditional view of the sandbox as self defeating.
Based on the ideas Selkirk put forth one can develop a strategy of what to do that will greatly help a site succeed even if the ideas the strategy is founded upon is wrong.
What I see from Selkirk's post is that one needs to focus on the user by creating compelling content or services. Accurate and compelling titles for pages, good descriptions and descriptive initial text on the page are all important to getting a compelling listings in SERPs that will encourage users to click through to the page in question. When doing SEO one must not forget to do UO (user optimization).
Now in regards to new sites having to fight their way up from the bottom. Why do they have to fight their way up from the bottom. Is it because they are "new" and Google penalizes "new" sites or is it because new sites have not established a track record of favorable characteristics like NATURALLY/ORGANICALLY collecting back links from lots of diverse as well as related sites.
Going on a link buying binge while maybe helpful isn't a replacement to the organic links that a good site builds up over time. Chris recently posted a great and really long article on link building methodologies I highly recommend reading it if you haven't already.
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