what passes for curation on this platform amounts to a race to see who votes fastest.

I'd agree with this. I'm sliding between a casual/active user and 50% of my voting power are automated, so I can imagine more being entirely automated. It's not a problem, because I'm curating trustworthy accounts that way, and have the network build from there.

It does very little to move actual good content to greater visibility.

Will have a better chance to happen under our proposal.

All too often the race to vote is being accomplished with bots and autovoting.
Again, autovoting isn't the problem. Misaligned incentives is the problem. Curation should be more incentivised.

Content creators already feel largely undervalued now. Decrease what they they earn now and more good content creators will be looking for other avenues and leaving the platform to the spammers and shit posters.

Our proposal will reduce spam and shitposters. 50% curation rewards might sound like taking away from authors, but what happens if it results in a better Steem? We definitely could use more curators than authors, which is what this proposal seeks to achieve.

Thanks for your feedback.