The benefits you propose should be tiered, always promoting users to get to the 'next' level and should be tied to the value perceptions of Steemit.
So, for example, the more SP you have, the longer your posts stay on the Top 'category' chart. (this would require we had top-category charts), or something similar. Longer visibility means more potential for voting, therefore more potential gain. So the implied perception is that investing in SP may pay off with more votes in your posts.
What about showing/paying out to the 3rd (or 4th) decimal place. This would be strictly a perception change. Not requiring any real change of the monetary system which is in palace. Instead of $0.00 not changing after your upvote, showing $0.001 (or $0.0001 might motivate people, as they realized they did move the needle, even if a very small amount.
Good suggestions!
I've been curious if the functionality for more decimal places is built in or not. I think it is definitely needed. I agree it would already add a "scoring mechanism" and some progression that minnows don't get even now. It becomes much more important if we get large influencers on the platform publishing content that may gobble up the lions share of daily rewards. More decimal places are also inherently needed to deal with a hopefully increasing value of steem as well as the reverse splits that will regularly occur. Interest, content, and curation rewards should all pay out in very fractional amounts if the system can handle it, so that everyone makes incremental progress with their interactions, however minimal.
very good idea @mrosenquist, i like this idea very much indeed. Yes we need to see everything, even the so called dust !! brilliant, this would give the minnows a feeling of voting something up and seeing a small return and at least a vote that brings benefit to others. Is this possible in the economic model set up already in Steemit ??