You are exactly correct, and yet even the testnet doesn't accurately represent what people will do when their real funds are at risk. There's no better mechanism to do those tests, but tests cannot actually add money to, or take it out of your wallet and impact the rent you pay, the food you buy, or your actual financial situation.
What is obvious to me is what has been the result of people's financial interests, and that has been that folks most intent on their finances gain financial rewards most. As this process cascades, the other values society provides are increasingly diminished until those values no longer make the society of requisite value, and inevitably this fact then causes the economic value of that society to vanish as well, since it only has any value in society.
Piles of money in a cave have no value at all, absent a viable society to spend them in.
Sound economics isn't theoretical, but demonstrated by historical results. For millenia capital gains have proven to be sound incentive for investors, and yet Steem has continually been made less productive of capital gains and more productive of extractive profiteering, until we now observe the marketcap of Steem declining in a rising market. A student of economic history will not be unfamiliar with this circumstance, nor of what comes next if the problem continues to grow worse. Economic collapse is repeatedly revealed in the historical record.
The solution is to reverse those incentives for extractive rapine, and implement incentives to imbue the investment vehicle with growing value that produce capital gains. Doubling the extraction of curation rewards but hastens the decline. Only creating incentive that enables substantial stakeholders to attain profits by creating development that produce capital gains will reverse that decline.
Thanks!