Will we shift users into more of a mindset where the goal is to reward what we want to encourage, and penalize what we want to discourage? Or will we just end up with more of the same - users trying to maximize short-term personal gain at the expense of everyone else?

... game theory? We know the answer. You don't have to guess. The answer is more of the same, maximize short-term personal gain. I honestly can't believe that otherwise smart people like @kevinwong have been so bullish for 50% curation. It is an absolute pie-in-the-sky fantasy to think that increasing curation rewards will do anything but decrease rewards going to smaller authors. Guess what - 100% return on your vote (by self voting) is still twice as much as 50% return on your vote under a proposed increase to curation rewards. What a joke. It is a real shame that the steem proposal system (which is clearly a good idea, regardless of how it is funded) is being bundled with the rest. We don't need a hardfork to stop bid bots, just change the TOS to align with the white paper's supposed "proof of brain" and make vote buying/selling against TOS, and delegate a portion of Stincs SP to flagging posts that buy votes. Done. Is this so hard? Also, for the love of all that is good, can people stop voting for witnesses who are also bid bot operators? Thanks.