I know you are always interested in new suggestions, and I wonder what you are thinking about my (already rather old) post concerning the reward curve: in case it wouldn't start linear, self-votes on 'empty' comments were less profitable. Therefore my suggestion is to let the reward curve start as n^2 and end linear. You can find the complete reasoning here.
(Very interesting is also this post from @clayop which I found later.)
Yes I absolutely agree that if it's feasibly possible then this is what we need to be implementing. The problem is steemit Inc no longer concern themselves with the economics of steem. They want to create a demand for SMT's by leaving steem as the broken prototype. I'd wonder how long it would take for somebody to develop steem cash, a fork of steem. I bet it could come years ahead of SMT's.