No, I'm not just being a grumpy old coder - I did a presentation on this same subject at university around about 1995.

Potential performance gains should not be dismissed. Some of these 'tricks' can make your code orders of magnitude faster

Some good ideas here, but I don't see that it would get around the money problem - "I'll give you $$$ if you delegate x of your points to me" - before you know it, those with money are again calling the shots