I thought the last fork release had a mechanism to have non-paying posts? That would be better than decreasing the reward pool for everyone else and distributing to null, IMO.

I agree, those developing this should be hansomely rewarded, but there's just so much criticism out there already that forgoing more payouts would go a long way from a PR perspective. They gain so much new STEEM via share dilution protection due to their massive VEST holdings that they have plenty to last them a very long time. If they don't distribute it well, they will be stuck holding a super majority of something with far kess value than it could have had. Just my opinion.