I don't see why people are willing to take super low CP pokemon with the argument that stardust is easy to get. I mean, unless you're catching an absolutely absurd amount of pokemon or there's a secret way to buy stardust in the shop, I can burn through my entire reserve being built up over a few days just trying to max out 2-4 pokemon. And they were already high.
And then you have pokemon that I rarely find, like charmander, that I'd eventually need 100 candies to raise a charmeleon to a charizard. I can't be using 50 candies raising my stats or I'll never be able to evolve mine. To me, it seems far, far more valuable to find one that already has high CP to evolve and top off.