Looking at it from an author's point of view, lowering the curation reward will disincentivize powering up of stakes and hence, less reward for authors.

That doesn't necessarily follow, since the amount of powered up stake doesn't affect powered up stake.

Perhaps you're suggested that powered up stake affects the price of the coin, but there's little evidence to show that to be true. From what I've observed, across the spectrum of cryptocurrencies with staking mechanisms, is that staking can mostly contribute to increased short term price fluctuations (because of temporary scarcity). "Temporary" is the operative word here, which explains why it increases volatility, but doesn't impact long term price much.

I still think the long term solution to all these problems is to remove the author and curation reward from layer zero, bring on the SMTs, and let each community develop their own tokens and system of moderation. Finally, I will say we leave the status quo while working towards a permanent solution of moving rewards to the community level.

I'm not sure it's strictly necessary to remove it from the base layer entirely, although I don't have a strong opinion on it, assuming HMTs can/do fill the gap.

But even if they do, the exact same discussions will come up at that point for HMTs themselves, and the answers will still need to be at hand. Should we design HMTs first, then try to figure out the possible answers? Personally, I think it makes sense to already have some ideas during the final implementation of HMTs, so that we can easily try new ideas.