Interesting idea about making new accounts more expensive. Here's an idea.... instead of using RC to create an account, it costs $10. Then, those $10 are used to buy HIVE (which gets around 250-300 at current prices) which are automatically powered up.

That way, people have to spend real money to buy accounts but a genuine new account comes pre-loaded with enough HP to make voting worthwhile, and because it is HP, it can't just be pulled straight back out again. We could even code new accounts that if the KE ratio is bad enough in the first 6 months or year it locks power downs.