Sci-fi be crazy!
Yeah, I get the frustration too. I had a delegation of 2000 SP at one point when I didn't have much SP on my own. At that time I was giving out $0.21 upvotes. It was glorious! Now I am around $0.01 - $0.02.
I don't think HF21 is going to make things better, at least for the authors. It will be interesting to see what happens going forward.