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<blockquote>coupling permissions with specific experience in the area of the permission is a good idea and should be kept as the basic premise of the permission system.</blockquote>

I disagree.  This is the basic flaw of the current abilities/permission system.  It is trying to be overly specific and misses the forest for the trees.

Basically, we only want people that know what they're doing to be allowed to do things that could damage the site.  That's basically all there's to it.  The problem then comes down to determining "know what they're doing".

The problem with our current system is that it dives deep into irrelevant minutia in trying to determine "knows what what they're doing" along various different orthogonal axes.

For example, you're not trusted to edit a post if you haven't edited enough previously that others agree were edited well.  But, having performed previous edits is a very narrow way to measure "knows what they're doing" when it comes to edits.  What you really want is someone that knows a good post from a bad one.  Simply writing a bunch of good posts should be good enough to demonstrate that.

All the various "knows what they're doing" attributes are closely linked.  If someone has been around a site long enough and has a track record of positive contributions, we should assume they "know what they're doing" and give them the powers to help with the janitorial work.

Some actions have more potential for damaging a site than others, so there should be a higher "knows what they're doing" threshold to allow them.  For example, editing others' posts doesn't need a high bar.  Most edits are uncontroversial spelling or grammar fixes.  If someone changes meaning against the author's intent, then the edit can be rolled back and a warning sent by a mod.

On the other hand, closing questions is often controversial even among experienced users with solidly positive track records.  Users should be selected carefully to receive that permission.

In summary, lots of different successful positive actions on a site should increase one's "knows what they're doing" factor, which in turn should unlock various permissions.  These things aren't anywhere as orthogonal as our current system treats them.

As an example, I have the highest rep on the Physics site, by more than 2x the next user.  I've written 36 answers with an average of 2.0 upvotes per answer, and only one with a negative score.  That should be plenty good enough to be trusted to know what a good question looks like, even though I haven't written any question.  I've also done 21 edits, but am still not trusted to make edits without them being approved by someone else.  That's ridiculous!

As a real world analogy, the current system is akin to saying you're not trusted to review books without having written a best-seller.  Just having read many books doesn't somehow give you the experience to be able to rate the books you've read.  That makes no sense in the real world, and not much more sense here on Codidact.