Hey Michael, It's great to see you talking about Steem in detail.
One of the first things I proposed was getting rid of SBD for the very same reasons you mention. The people need the orientation of the dollar value, was what I was told back then, but this argument does not hold up anymore.
However I have been thinking latelsy that Steem and SBD have some pretty interesting technical/financial perks in the way they are issued:
Steem has a high market cap but there is not a lot of liquidity in it.
SBD gets used by many (to cash out profits on exchange) but has a low market cap.
The German people in the #deutsch community are right now talking about changing the vote algorithm. I dont like it because it will make things more complicated again. They want to merge n² and n....