As one of the crankiest and most outspoken critics of the steem economy (I have 10 posts about it of my 300+) I support these changes. I support smooth's talk of making some of these changes gradual (those effecting the witnesses).

Priority Uno- We have to kill the inflation to save the price of steem.
Priority Dos- We need more people to be active bloggers and investors to make the system worth more.

After you stop sucking out all the rewards with inflation the next priority is getting the price higher so the rewards are appealing, so people come here to blog and get paid, and then people have steem and SB to buy shit with and support your currency plan. That way steemit can take over the world from the fed and make this planet a better place.

Because price is so important I think you should consider doing the a 10:1 reverse split now as well. This place will function better with rewards based off of $1.7 steem as opposed to $0.17 steem. Basically any time you guys get to $0.50/steem or less you should be doing reverse splits to get it back to $1 to make it appealing to blog here. If it starts getting crazy high then you might consider doing a normal split to keep some parity with the USD.

You also have to deal with the elephant in the room. The rich mofos on the system need to cash some of that out on the cheap. The market cap of this place doesn't call for $185M evaluation so you're not going to get steem/SP anywhere near that.

I am aware dumping steeem by whales and increasing the price seem at odds. That said if you encourage the whales to sell even after a 10:1 reversal you can accomplish both.

I've said from the beginning of my attacks on the economy that people are the value. The changes necessary above and beyond what's included in this post really require a better economic distribution of the SP and Steem, and to have high rewards as an incentive to blog, curate, and invest here.

By all means get the Power Down shorter. Dump and dump some more. Get the price cheap as fuck for a while so people can buy in, and when you have a healthier distribution you'll get a lot healthier of an ecosystem and a better self regulating economy.

Conclusion: Nice post. Support it with a delayed change for witnesses. Get the price of steem down by having whales dump it. Get the price of steem up by doing a reverse split to get us back to $1 as a launch point. Best of luck. It's certainly better than watching this place die a shitty death due to inflation, lack of rewards, and all your daily users that aren't in the top 30 bailing.

Maybe I won' t be so cranky a few months from now.