I certainly like this more than the idea that races are just skins with no choice/consequence. I think races should have certain tendencies that differentiate them from each other. Using point buy for ability scores alleviates some of the impact (especially for SAD classes), but it comes down to choices. I believe playing an elf barbarian who's a little bit weaker but noticeably smarter than the typical barbarian is better than all barbarians being exactly the same. This isn't a competition among the players. Dare to be different.

However, I think you're going down a difficult road for little gain because there are systems out there that support the "build whatever you want" concept. GURPS and Rolemaster come to mind. They're certainly not as popular as D&D, but going with a system that does what you're looking for is much easier than building a new system on top of one that doesn't do what you're looking for.

It's one of the reasons Rolemaster is my favorite system (with MERPS being my favorite setting). The crit tables and absolutely insane spell list are two others. It's lack of popularity is why I haven't played it since 2003, so... yeah.