Thanks for sharing your views.

Do efforts on blog posts equate to value? If some people work harder than others on a post, does that make the most more valuable? How are you defining value here? If a post is considered "valuable" does that value change the price of the STEEM token?

"Just upvoting" with a non-linear curve no longer means they will get a meaningful curation reward. They have to upvote stuff other people agree is valuable. That means effective curation. That means more generally-accepted-as-valuable content rising to the trending page. That, hopefully, means more investment in Steem and Steem Power by brands who want to be associated with this high quality content site.

Delegating SP to effective curation systems would actually be a good use of SP. Some might say it's a better use than posting valueless content and self-voting it to get a reward. One fills the blockchain with crap, the other improves content discovery and has the potential to make Steem look like a better investment.

Edit: btw, your "have you gone mad?" statement fits nicely into the post I linked to first in my article: https://steemit.com/relationships/@lukestokes/we-disagree-are-you-ignorant-immoral-or-stupid