Digital BW, The Print

Is zone system development time manipulation irrelevant when scanning 
film as opposed to traditional printing?   That is the question I would 
like some help with.

My understanding is that the zone system is way of ensuring a  constant 
density range on the negative independent of the brightness range of 
the scene.  This is desirable because it makes most scenes printable on 
a grade 2 paper (leaving the other grades available for artistic 
interpretation) and it helps minimize the stuffing around in the 
darkroom required to get a good print.

Since I am not doing wet prints but am scanning the negatives, it seems 
to me that the N- or N+ development dependent on the scene brightness 
range is, mostly, irrelevant.  By setting the black point, setting the 
white point and scanning the negative am I not mapping the entire 
density range of the image to a numerical range of 0-256 or 0-64k?  
This mapping would take place independent of the absolute density any 
particular zone.

As a hypothetical example lets assume a scene contains a 8 stop range 
of brightness.  Three images are similarly exposed to capture that  
brightnesses range. The three images are given different development 
times and produce density ranges of  (1.0-0.3=.7), (1.4-0.4=1.0) and 
(2.0-.5=1.5).  When the images are scanned each one will produce a full 
histogram from 0 to 255 and a scene brightness at the 6th of the eight 
stops will show up at the same place in each of the histograms.

Soooo, can't I simplify the zone mantra to "expose for the shadows and 
let the highlights fall where they may with normal development".  Also, 
  wouldn't it be better to generally use N+1 development times so that 
the numbers from the raw scan occupied more of the scanner's range?

Thanks for your help