Really appreciate the work you are doing, but this sounds pretty terrible.
I powered up a lot of Hive in the last months mainly because I believe that Hive has a future, but also (and I'd lie if I'd say otherwise) because I can get something like 10-15% APR. This is a/the main incentive currently to power up Hive and buy it. It is what is absent in most other crypto projects and if we drop this feature I think the consequences might be quite drastic.
The reasons you gave for holding Hive after we lower curation to about 1/4 (governance and reduced inflation) are not very compelling (since most investors don't necessarily want to get so deeply involved with the chain/ or don't care this much about governance) Reduced inflation (and therefore reducing curation as you suggest) might be somewhat good for the token price in general, but it also comes at a cost of 10%+ APR. Every big investor won't like that kind of a trade.
I strongly suggest we overthink such an action carefully as I feel the thing that would be "fixed" by this would bring more harm to the blockchain at large (with investors leaving - and they will sell - token price will go south). Automatic curation can actually work very well if one reviews the accounts being curated once in a while. Automatic curation, I would argue, is actually one of the major incentives for many users to post at all currently as there is some "guarantee" of getting a return for your post.
Now, while it seems fair that people in group 3 should earn more than people in group 4 (after all people in group two are providing useful work to the blockchain), I think it’s clear that people in group 1 and group 2 shouldn’t earn more than people in group 4.
I don't think this is true at least for group 1. Again, auto curation can work quite well. I am autovoting myself about 70+ accounts currently (mostly minnows) and these votes definitely incentivize the authors to post (in what in my opinion is quality content). Therefore, I think this would count as "useful work" for the blockchain. Of course I am not saying that currently the system is working perfectly and there is definitely room for improvement. But lowering curation to 1/4 is not a good solution in my opinion.
Well, you're at least one of the first to make an argument for auto-voting. I think the payout for such auto-voting is too high, but I understand your view point. Anyways, my opinion on this was never strong, and lots of other people do have strong opinions on it, so I'm just going to drop it :-) Author/curation rewards are really low on my list of things to spend time on for Hive anyways.
It's true that there's almost no reason to hold HIVE. Its value is inherently deflationary. HIVE is like a hot potato... you never want to own any.... and if you get it, you quickly get rid of it (or lose).