an alternative is that Steemit submits a proposal that transfers the money to them. It won't be popular but this isn't the type of community that will do anything about it any more so it'll just happen.

I don't know if people and Steemit would go for it, but an idea that I've been pondering is to have the DAO fund a bot that buys STEEM and then powers it up and airdrops it to people in good standing (i.e. individual humans, not powering down, no plagiarism, no bidbot use, etc.) as "basic income". Could help build out the "middle class" and address the decentralization problem.