Thank you for explaining this incredibly interesting idea in a way that even a layman like me can understand (mostly).
I am more of a community and content guy than a tech guy, so please forgive me if this question is based on a faulty premise due to my lack of expertise.
It seems to me that in addition to their required duties, some people expect witnesses to do other tasks that will help increase the value of steem (develop apps, lead projects, etc.).
Is it possible that this system would remove that secondary expectation of witnesses and they would only need to perform those required tasks? If that is the case, some of their expected workload would be removed. If their job became easier, it would make sense that they would earn fewer rewards. Perhaps part of the funding for this project could come from that reduction in witness rewards.
If a witness wanted to earn more rewards, this system would allow them to earn rewards for valuable contributions. Therefore witnesses who are going "above and beyond the call of duty" would earn more rewards than those who are simply performing the basic tasks. I am not saying that it is wrong to only perform the required task, it is quite on the contrary. Those tasks are essential and the witnesses should be rewarded. I am just saying this system may help create a more fair distribution of witness rewards while providing incentive for non-witnesses to make valuable contributions as well.
Yes, one of the original intents behind the creation of a work proposal system for BitShares was to rationalize payments for things like code development.
Prior to the deployment of a worker proposal system on BitShares (BitShares 1.0 timeframe), for example, one of my companies ran 4 witnesses/block producers to help pay some of the costs of the development we were doing for the blockchain. Needless to say, this wasn't an ideal point for decentralization of block production (although there were 30+ witnesses back then, so it's not quite as bad as it sounds).
Whether this constitutes an argument from reducing the pay of witnesses now is really up to your opinion of what witnesses are being paid for currently. Some witnesses campaign for their position based on their outside work, others explicitly state that their work and responsibilities as a witness are tied to upkeep and security of their node and thoughtful decisions regarding upgrading their software (especially in the case of soft and hard forks).
Thanks for the response. Basically it is tough to say without a definition of what the essential "basic tasks" are, how much it costs to perform them, and what is the appropriate reward for performing them (I do not believe people should simply break even and do this for free). If we knew that amount, then we could decide if there is a surplus of witness rewards that could be used to fund worker proposals. Thanks for explaining this so clearly. As far as figuring out the tasks and rewards... I think I'll leave that one to the experts.
During the process where Steemit cut the fees paid to the worker, I believe that pay cut was justified in part with the idea that witnesses should no longer be expected to be coders, marketers, etc. Of course, up and coming witnesses looking to break into the top 20 still will often promise to do more, in hopes of getting elected.
Worker proposals will hopefully put this idea to rest and allow for a more rationalized payment system where witness pay is just for the tasks that all witnesses perform and worker proposal pay is for doing other forms of useful work like running API servers.
This has a distinct advantage because it allows the payment amount to be tailored to fit the task instead of doing a "one payment size fits all" which is obviously never going to be fair.