I feel that pretty much everyone that has been here for long enough knows that the system we have in place today is not working.

Yes, and some people knew that the current system wouldn't work well before it was implemented by STINC and the top-20 witnesses that rubber-stamped the changes. Pretty much the entire list that followed the sentence above existed prior to HFs 17-19 and other aspects were exacerbated by those changes.

Now, the people who supported those changes and are finally admitting that the system is at least somewhat broken are seemingly both for and against these new (actually, very old) proposals.

There was a rather influential group of users who discussed at length the reward curve in early 2017, back when it was n², and pretty much none of us thought linear rewards were a good idea or a solution for any existing issues. If I'm not mistaken, you were even a part of that discussion. I have no idea how linear rewards became an actual proposal and then was actually accepted by top witnesses, but it was a travesty that this protocol was implemented.

Returning to anything more than linear is a fantastic idea.

Likewise, returning a larger percentage of the reward pool to users based on their investment and activity on the chain is a fantastic idea. Just like the linear curve was a bad idea, so was changing post-curation rewards from 50/50 to 75/25...and in reality, due to the 30-minute reverse-auction window, that was skewed to ~88/12 in favor of authors.

So when authors complain about how many rewards they're going to lose out on, I do not feel bad for them at all, since it requires no investment whatsoever for them to post, earn, and cash out their rewards in order to "get paid" at the expense of those buying STEEM and powering it up. And I say this as someone who has posted a lot of content to this chain and have received a lot of rewards for doing so.

As an author, I have been greatly overpaid for my content in this Steem bubble compared to those who have invested and lost lots of money due to the imbalanced reward/incentive protocols.

As for the downvote pool - I don't think this will have much of an impact for the average person. Most users aren't avoiding downvotes because it costs them voting power and they get no rewards. They avoid it because they have been browbeaten into believing that downvotes are bad for the system and that those who downvote are somehow "evil." The culture here has never been great for honest curation and painting downvotes and downvoters as "toxic," "negative," or even comparing the downvotes to rape is absolutely ridiculous and more harmful to the platform than the actual votes cast.

Regarding the SPS, these are my thoughts on where that money should come from...

First, I would practically eliminate the "interest" on SP. It makes absolutely no sense to inflate a currency in order to pay people to partially compensate them for inflation. To me, that sounds like some Keynesian bullshit that does nothing but guarantee downward price pressure. Stakeholders should be rewarded for their activity (curation) and via capital appreciation. That means better incentives for holding SP and improving the actual economics and ecosystem - and the perception of it.

In other words: improved stakeholder incentives, better/more targeted development projects, actual commerce, and actual marketing to relevant companies/industries that would find the Steem blockchain useful (such as data management?).

Secondly, after virtually (or entirely) eliminating any of the absurd inflation-covering inflation payments, it would be best to slightly reduce top-20 witness rewards (since recent developments will apparently reduce costs for operating nodes) and redirect a small portion of what used to be the inflation-covering inflation payments to the new worker proposal fund.

Since author rewards are already being reduced to be fairly equal to curation rewards, I don't think we need a further reduction in author rewards at this time. (Although I still feel that 50% is too much for the mostly undesirable content that Steem has to offer to the average person on social media.)

So, that would be my proposal. TL;DR version is:

• 50/50 is great.
• Non-linear reward curve is great.
• Downvote pool will likely be inconsequential for most users.
• Eliminate inflation payments for covering inflation (because it's stupid).
• Slightly reduce top-20 witness rewards (since node costs are/will be reduced).
• Use some of those eliminated/reduced rewards to cover funding for the worker proposal system. Completely eliminate the rest of the rewards from inflation altogether to reduce the total amount.

If that can be done, I think we'd be in a much better position to attract investment and meaningful development. In turn, authors should be better compensated through a likely higher STEEM price and the amount of STEEM available for the proposal system will likely be more valuable. In my opinion, it's a net win for everyone, from content creators and consumers (curators) to witnesses and developers.

But for crying out loud...can we accompany this with some actual MARKETING of the CHAIN? Enough about the social aspect and how authors are "getting paid." Let's promote more of the fact that Steem is fast, free, and scalable! And maybe find businesses/companies/investors who can take advantage of that.