Thanks to JAR-FCL most airline-only pilots are not licensed to fly C150s unless they do so frequently.
As for the "more of a manager" philosophy, I am not sure if there are really that many aircraft around that do not need more than button pushing if more than one thing goes wrong at the same time. While my trusted steed is able to autoland itself along an ILS even with an engine failure, things get rather nasty if electrics elect to quit. We also fly to places where there is no ILS at all and to others were you need a little bit of manual flying in order to do not make a fool of yourself.
As a traditional license can be done in slightly over a year (plus time for conversion training), it does not sound unreasonable to try to get it in a little less time and it is probably true that more can be learned inside a SIM than by droning up and down Florida or Arizona in CAVU weather to meet some minimum flight hours requirement. (At least since the advent of GPS which took one of the main elements of adventure out of true VFR without radio navigation. I remember getting splendidly lost on some of my first cross-country trips and still maintain that there are only pilots who have lost their bearings and those who pretend not to remember.....)
It depends on what the industry makes with MPL.
BTW, I find it highly unrealistic to degrade an MPL pilot to a you-will-not-touch anything on my flight deck-role. These guys might have limited training but that will not prevent them from gathering experience in the right seat.