If we want Steem to be adopted by the masses, we have to reward content the masses can create. That's facebook tier content. We don't have to reward it equally with 'Moby Dick', but there's a reason we need to reward it: it is the content that brings the masses.
I'm fine with not agreeing on how to reward content, because that a subjective evaluation, and it's not particularly relevant to the EIP. The rewards curve, downvote pool, doubling of curation and halving of author rewards aren't for specific low quality content. Those are for all content. I see that without many users to create a market for Steem there is little impetus to push up the price of Steem. We have a terrible retention rate now, and HF21 will make that much worse. Pick any reason someone would come here, open an account and leave, and HF21 makes that reason worse. Low rewards? Cut them in half after HF21. Probably more than half because the rewards curve is going to lower the value of votes from smaller stakeholders in addition to the direct halving of author rewards. Clearly new accounts aren't going to be making anything from curation. My curation rewards are around ~4% of my rewards, and I do a lot of curating with a little bit of stake. Newbs won't have that stake to curate with.
The fact of financial manipulation via stake weighting means that 90% of rewards, author and curation, go to whales. The rest of the platform splits the remaining ~10%, and newbs without an established network get the least. The median payout last I checked was .01 SBD. Given that the largest group of content creators receives that payout for their posts, I'm surprised any of them bother to stay and post at all. Reducing that median payout to .005 SBD isn't going to drive higher retention.
The downvote pool may be the worst aspect of the HF for newbs. They might not grasp the fact of retaliation and run around flagging trending posts. If they do, they're going to be retaliated against by folks with more stake than them. That's just how Steem works. Newbs aren't going to just ignore that and keep on Steemin'. They're going to do the obvious thing and leave, pissed off.
Adding a tax shrinking the rewards pool is highly regressive and going to hurt small stakeholders most.
None of these things is going to solve any problems Steem faces, and all of them are going to make those problems worse.
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This is the best explanation I have read yet! Only thing is at end it should read "None of these things are going to..." Besides that A+!