That is true, but you and I are resigned in the knowledge that a purpose-built device will always be able to outperform a general purpose device, even if the cost of that purpose-built device is fiscally prohibitive. Thus, the gap cannot ever truly be closed, in the truest sense of the word. Thankfully, this is clarified somewhat: "It is appropriate that some users can have a certain advantage over others, but their investments should grow at least linearly with the power."
Vitalik is trying to get his PoW to use the general purpose computations from the contracts to prove that they are running CPU's.
I am not sure how far he is along with this idea, because the latest is that he is considering this new dPoS thing. But if he uses PoW and uses the turing complete contracts as proof for the PoW then a cpu would be the optimal hardware for mining, because an ASIC for Ethereum would simply be a better CPU, and then you're up against Intel.
Of course, his ideas might not be possible, which is why they still have no mining algorithm.
It won't help them for at least three reasons.
1. The most used contracts must be put on ASICs to get scaling, because Moore's Law is ending (unless POET rescues it), i.e. they will force more centralization of mining not less.
2. Algorithms aren't fungible.
3.
