As I explained elsewhere, if we adopted the same signal of hbd_print_rate as you suggest, it would be to change payments from HBD to Hive of equivalent value. That's what the hbd_print_rate does: it doesn't reduce payments for posts, it just changes the form of the payment. IMO that serves no useful function as it doesn't cut costs at all.

You're not actually proposing adopting the same signal: you're proposing an entirely new and different thing and trying to link it to an existing functionality to justify it.

I don't agree with your reasoning as to two classes of users, but I see no way we're going to come to an agreement on that issue, so lets just agree to disagree on that point. This sort of complaint will always exist in any stake-weighted system and the underlying reason for discontent in stake-weighted systems should be obvious to most people nowadays in a world where stake-weighting taken to an extreme may end up destroying the world.

On the "related" issue of consensus, sure consensus matters, and of course it is not one person versus everyone else when it comes to what sets value. But, practically speaking, it is the people who are willing to hold and/or buy the coin at any given price, versus those who just sell it that assigns a consensus value to any coin. It's not strictly a numbers game where you count the voters, the mechanism is more complex.

My bottom line is this: I don't think the proposed change will have any significant impact on the price of the coin. It might make a few people feel better, but will it cause them to drive up the price of the coin? I very much doubt it.

And if the concern is the amount of money being spent by the DHF, we can already see this is rapidly dwindling. Of the few proposals that are still funded, most are near renewal periods, and in the current environment it seems less than likely that most will be able to get funded again. So the whole proposal is chasing a goal that already appears to be naturally resolving (for better or worse, which remains to be seen), IMO.