to me it still looks like too much of the focus of the benefits of Hive is on DHF grants

The 10% allocated to the @hive.fund (syphoned from the reward pool) is a drop in the bucket compared to the ninjamine constantly flushing it with cash. The best way to increase rewards (and retain users) is for number to go up. Of course that is unhelpful sentiment because we just circle back to arguing about what makes number go up/down; which is all speculation and impossible to actually measure within the tokenomics jungle.

Making the DHF more of a loan system

It would be nice if DHF proposals could generate measurable value so that we would know if the network was generating a profit from these investments, but one of the big utilities of having the DHF in the first place is the ability to fund things that we know have value to the community but specifically can't capture any of that value (as all that value is instead captured by the Hive network generically rather than by the dev that creates it).

In theory a good proposal with a good business model that can generate income/profit doesn't need the DHF and could just as easily be funded with outside investors; most commonly being a token on HiveEngine. This creates an awkward paradox if you catch my drift. I don't necessarily disagree with anything you've said but there are so many weird nuances to this issue.