You're describing WinFS, which looked into and ultimately abandoned Microsoft 20 years ago. I'm sure other groups have looked into this as well, but there's no such thing as free lunch.
> I'm all for gradual improvements but at one point and on we should zoom even further out and pick our battles well.
That sounds a lot like picking up more battles, yet we all still have 24 hours a day. Recursively trying to perfect lower layers will have you like Hal changing the lightbulb https://youtu.be/AbSehcT19u0
