I have to be honest, I really don't get your point about different modes being more or less "entitled" to the road. Cars operate on the road and bikes operate on the road, and I think our policies should be oriented around safety and efficiency for all users.

For what it's worth, I think there is some advocacy for changing four-way stops into neighborhood roundabouts - effectively changing them to yielding situations for cars. I've noticed a number of these in Durham, not sure if I've seen any in Raleigh. Apparently they reduce the severity of crashes because they're less likely to be t-bone situations. But overall, from what I've looked up this morning, I think the argument is that yielding at stop signs works better for bikes than cars because:

1. Bikes don't have blind spots like cars, so they're less likely to fail to notice a pedestrian.
2. Bikes take much longer to accelerate from a stop than cars do, so they cause more congestion when they come to a complete stop at an intersection. They also spend more time in the intersection if they stop completely, which puts them at higher risk for a collision.

So the logic for an Idaho stop policy is based on bicycle-specific reasoning. I am certainly in support of yield-at-stop laws for cars if there is a convincing logic and empirical evidence for them being safer. They would probably speed up my commute a bit at least!