That's a good analogy and I think it will be beneficial to have a better idea of where expenditures are coming from. The thing that I take issue with is giving small amounts of RC to start with rather than making sure there would be an abundance. If the current (20.4) rate of resource credit generation was used from the beginning, it would have prevented a lot of issues. Even if someone couldn't vote because of lack of VP, if they had mana, they could have at least commented.
I think that's a lesson for the next time we need to make a change: Make sure to give users more than enough to work with, then cut it down as needed/possible.