It can't get much worse than it already is.

The famous last words :)

The system needs to change if we have any hope of making it better.

True statement. I just don't think that the proposed changes will get you the result that you want. Call me cynical, but all that I can see as the result of this change is more drama. The whales will find a workaround and still get what they want out of it (even more than what they are taking out now).

Unless you are in the camp of thinking that the system is so messed up that it is beyond fixing, then why even try - then I'd hope you can at least see the potential to at have a chance of making things better.

Steem is what it is. All the HFs before this one made it that way. I'm more for accepting this reality and see what we can do with it than going after the whales & bid bots... See what works now and what keeps people around here. Do more of that.

Creating the right incentives that will bring about the original steemit vision is next to impossible. Mostly because the original vision (great authors get rewarded) is ignoring the reality of the human nature.

If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on the whales doing just fine, and the small guys getting less and less while at the same time being abused by the self-righteous downvoters.

In any case, good luck!