I don't think there's a crossed wire about the proposal mechanism itself. It was obvious in the original proposal that it was a mechanism to cut DHF spending. It's the justification that was used that made no sense, IMO.

The post suggests that the hbd_print_rate was made to reduce spending, but that a backdoor (or loophole) was left that caused it not to reduce spending for the DHF. But this is strictly not true: the hbd_print_rate does not reduce spending, nor was it intended to do so. It just switches payments for posts from HBD to Hive (the posts continue to receive the same value).

And I completely disagree with the concept of cutting pay in the manner suggested. It cuts across all proposals without differentiating between the different things being funded.

For example, it would equally cut across a single person who was primarily doing the work out of idealism but can afford to take a pay cut, a group of programmers who are paid by such a person (who will not willing take such a pay cut, but will simply find other work), and a proposal like the HBD stabilizer which generally speaking earns money for the DHF

The only way to adjust for this arbitrary cut in pay would then be to create and vote on more proposals to make reasonable adjustments. But this shows the basic uselessness of the proposed change: the same effect of the proposal can be done already simply by unfunding current proposals and voting in ones that pay more or less.

The only time the proposal is uniquely effective is when the rate is dropping down to near zero, at which point it becomes impossible to pay for anything, no matter what stakeholders want to do (short of yet another hardfork to eliminate or workaround it). But hardforks are one of the most costly and risky means of making adjustments and they are also more time-consuming to enact.