Great post, your solution is definitely a good compromise.

Another solution that I believe can suit both sides: Let's have a power-up period instead of a power-down period.

If someone wants to have influence on witness and SPS voting, then he will have to power up his steem and wait for 13 weeks to get a full power-up. The amount powered up will increase each week.

However, the power-down will be instant, so no one will feel like his steem is not liquid.

Whales will enjoy not being constrained, and the voting on steem won't be abused, because an abuser will have to hold Steem for a long time (or have minimal influence).

This also solves another IMPORTANT problem that is not being given a lot of consideration: This change will allow panic selling.

Panic selling is great for the price of steem as it gets rid of the weak hands at the bottom (the lowest price possible).

What we have currently is people panicking at the bottom, initiating powerdowns, and selling each week at higher prices. This create tons of sell pressure.

Other coins don't deal with that, and that's why they have higher market caps even though they are useless.