You could start a company and hire people on other standards, and I suspect it would work, as long as the "other standards" are painful in the same way as the current ones. For example, you could require candidates to learn ten pages of Chinese poetry by heart, or anything else that tests their ability to keep their mind on-task for long stretches of time. In my experience, people with that ability can become good programmers if they're inclined to.

What won't work though is hiring based on only past experience. The bullshitters will eat you alive. You really do need some kind of "underwater basket weaving" as a test.