To amplify a bit what you said...the 2x gap is much, much smaller than currently. Curation currently yields around 15% (after factoring in the typical effect of the reverse auction), meaning the ratio between self-voting and curation is about 7x. Even if the effect of the reverse auction were diminished or removed, it would still be 4x. I agree with you that is too high and even 2x may still be too high. We might need to go to a higher curation percentage which would narrow the gap further (for example, 90% curation would reduce it to about 1.1x).
However, before we go that far we should certainly try moving way from 7x first. So I agree with the 50% part of the proposal.
I've written to @dwinblood below about this, not sure if it checks out. 2x may be justifiable. I think anything more than 50% is gonna have a hard time with the author-types. 90% is leaving almost nothing for them (although I could see that it encourages way more curation than authoring, and probably closer to the spread of user types in any social content platform)
edit: woops just realised this is the @dwinblood thread
Okay, "author types" are part of the community. Their opinion matters, but does that mean they have a veto?
I don't know if >50% is needed. But if it is needed to make the system work, what do we prefer? A system that doesn't work or pissing off the author types? I'll take the lesser evil if necessary,