I think it would be reasonable to redefine the witness compensation algorithm in order to create a new scenario where many more standby witnesses would at least keep break even at today low steem price. This way the project would remain much longer in a healthy decentralized situation as it is today.
I could even think of a dynamic algorithm rebalancing compensation every once in a while depending on the price. The baseline could be just the way things are right now and the other extreme a scenario where at least top100 witnesses do not lose money.