I work in the in the IT indusrty your ide regarding "When you want to open a channel, you could opt to scan the network, fund the node with the fewest connections and then open a channel with them." the idea in itself is good but as far as the networking protocol goes latencey becomes the largest concern, while fewer connections may help tracaction times, networking protocols have always been about the lest amount of hops, thats my two cents worth :-)