Hi thanks for dropping by @pharesim!
Although I share @whatsup's concern that moving back to a superlinear curve will not incentivize voting on better content but on known successful authors, I also feel like the overall situation can't get worse than it is now.
Curation services will emerge out of the proposal and we'll have the best of both worlds (something like n^1.3, which is between n and n^2), just need sometime for it to play out until it reaches the new economic equilibrium. Cheaper downvotes are a contingency and coupled with n^1.3, we'd have a manageable playing field for community self-reg.
I'm also not convinced that paying stakers an automated return wouldn't improve the content rating - as long as they get the same they'd get with vote farming. Why should anyone put in the work if they can make the same or more without.
With the proposed changes, passive staking could work (or else we just have a shrunken rewards pool under the same econs), although stakeholders will most likely delegate to curation services which should more or else bring about the same returns as bidbots.
Well, probably everything has been said by now. Flags aren't free, they have a social cost. And a big issue in the reward economics is that we force people to participate in something they don't care about. Those will always go the easiest route to make their profit, which under superlinear means automation towards successful authors. With n^1.x less than in the old days, but probably still noticeable.
The reward economics would drastically change when staking is more profitable than vote farming, the assumption that it'd stay the same doesn't make sense to me. There'd be no more bid bots and self voting, as those looking to maximize profits wouldn't participate in that econ any more.
But that's running in circles with assumptions on both sides, no way to tell with certainty without testing in the live environment.
Anything that makes bidbots less profitable is good, and that's something your suggestion will definitely achieve!