Yes, it would. People aren't persisting in using Emacs because it's a good editor, but rather because it's an integrated environment for manipulating anything textual (which happens to be scripted in a Lisp dialect). The integration is the important part, and it's integrated in a very different sense than, say, Visual Studio or Eclipse. It just happens to have ergonomically nightmarish default keybindings (and other historical baggage), and a culture that perpetuates them.

I've tried viper mode (I used vim for five years before I started using Emacs, and I still use nvi for quick editing sometimes), but it's against the current of the ten million other settings Emacs has.

I would love to see a real alternative to that facet of Emacs (and would work on one, if I ever got that kind of time...), but vim isn't it. Wily / Acme are closer, perhaps, but they trade complex keybindings for switching constantly between the mouse and keyboard, which is likely worse.