While i 100% agree with the idea and concept behind it, I would argue that it is against the idea of steemit and there are better ways to achieve similar goals. steemit's idea is to be decentralized and allow people to do what they wish, even if it is at their detriment, such as creating upvote bots. if the steemit dev team is collecting internal ad money, then they will feel they are getting richer on our money. They are a particular group of individuals who might feel guilty accepting this money since it centralizes power into their hands.

The communities features is something that is a much better way of allowing curating to occur in specific fields and not violate the idea of centralizing fees.

Outside of that, i think what you are suggesting is exactly a current real world model that works. And as much as people say steemit is a social media environment, it is actually more of a economic environment, which is why i think your idea will 100% work.