yes as I have been tracking the same thing it certainly appears that as network activity slowly picks back up, the RC cost per transaction is increasing (which is what you would expect given the statements on how the RC will work on market principles with cost going up as demand/activity goes up). Even at current RC costs, totally not a workable system. I am less concerned about upvotes for small accounts and more for the ability to comment, which is the best way that small accounts can earn. Even a 500 SP account has a ridiculously limited number of comments per day they can leave. Unless something magically changes the RC costs around when equilibrium is reached, I will personally be advocating (as one of the voting stakeholders / operators of the Curie top 20 witness) for a fast patch that removes RC market.

EDIT: I guess with the RC system in particular you don't even have to patch or roll back, Stinc built into HF20 the ability to roll back the RC system and go back to prior bandwidth system. From steemitblog post: ""Due to this uncertainty, we added a 'fail safe' to the code that will enable witnesses to revert from the RC system back to the old bandwidth system if absolutely necessary."