Steem's participation economy (vs. the investment economy) works entirely inasmuch as there are users present who are interested in participating. Growing the participation economy thus requires increasing the population of users who are interested in participating, and maintaining those users who are already here and doing so.

Changing the economic incentives around in order to force interest in participating out of those who are already uninterested will not work, and sacrificing our abilities to attract new users to do so is entirely backwards thinking. If economic incentives are to be changed they should be changed to attract new participants - as linear rewards do, as high author rewards do - rather than discourage them.