I'm also skeptical that we can survive through to the long term without a reasonably functional economic system in place for our base token. As a pure bandwidth token, many other projects have beaten us to it, and can do what we do faster and better.
I think test nets are better used for technical tests of function than economic behavior. We're interested in the latter which can only happen if people really really cared and are playing with real money. Maybe I'm being insufficiently imaginative with SMTs that can be pegged to certain other currencies etc, but I don't see people caring about them for a long time for voting behavior surrounding them to be a useful indication of anything.
I'm all for SMTs, and I think even if these economic changes are implemented alongside them they'll take no more than a weeks worth of extra dev time.