If reward payouts were efficiently going to true influencers or successful onboarding, those of us supporting burnpost would see a lot less reason to vote that way

I don't get that. Much of the rewards goes to enrich those few people either way, voting on @burnpost doesn't change that. On the contrary, by lowering the inflation what they earn is theoretically worth even more. And not giving out rewards to the tail is deadly for onboarding in my view.

I'm aware that curation projects which spread votes aren't able to vote solely on exceptional content, but at least those votes dilute the earnings of the people on the list and motivate newcomers to stay around a bit longer.

//edit:
After letting my thoughts propell around it a bit more I feel even stronger against the burnposts.
Using the golden rule/categorical imperative, I wondered what would happen if everyone acted a certain way:

• self voting: inflation is high, stays with investors
• burnposts: inflation is lower, but still stays with investors
• delegate to projects: inflation is distributed, the more projects/curators are active the better

Of course it's a (maybe a bit overly) simplified approach, but to me it feels like the difference between the first and the second isn't too big, mainly because investors are rewarded for the burns. It doesn't help with growth, and that's the function I see behind curation rewards.

Lowering the inflation that way benefits everyone who's already involved, be it an investor or an established author or a spammer, but it hurts the tail we need to grow.