I'm also an advocate for doing our best to "break" Steemit so we can find the weak spots while we're still in beta.

That's an interesting viewpoint! For sure - if it is going to break, now is the time to make it happen :)

Any of these changes to pay/reward structure really isn't going to affect my participation anyway so maybe I'm crazy.

Hopefully it will make more 'regular' users feel like they at least have some say by increasing the power of their votes compared to the mega-whales :)