f) I believe an unmentioned opportunity might be a huge one for many, and even start competing with bid-bots in the nearer future: delegating to the SMT projects that will be launched and will hand out their tokens to those who delegate!
I did it for a few weeks: 200 delegated SP gave me about 200 HUNT tokens a week. Now, these HUNT tokens will be tradable for STEEM once SMT's are 'live', but also, HUNT tokens will be spendable in their own ecosystem that will be expanded with a review site and a Kickstarter alternative - brilliant if you ask me!
I can see a future where delegating to SMT's is way more interesting (not just ROI, but honestly interesting because the projects tickle the imagination) than delegating to bid-bots, heck, bid-bots might even die out slowly because delegators pull their stakes so they have 'free' SP to support a cooler project with.
The biggest SP holders might find it an interesting alternative where they can diversify their portfolios without having to cash out or trade their STEEM.
(And yup, the downside, although not part of the topic, is that also smaller SP holders will start delegating to these projects, and less and less SP will be available to upvote content with. Which then might be compensated with the fact that SMT's will give alternative upvote possibilities. And so on and so on.)
Yes that is an option, that will hopefully save Steem's ass :) Unfortunately, we don't know as yet how much the hunt-tokens will be worth...
A profitable alternative, yet to be devised would be nice, I'm just not sure anything is likely to compete in the near term.
And I totally agree with your final point, lets hope there is an SP scramble in future by companies to reward their people :D