I very much appreciate this candid discussion of your struggle to design appropriate delegation arrangements.
Given that such contracts can be standardized, can you not offer contracts that depend on curation split, designate self votes abuse, monitor those users, and pull the delegation if they self vote?
I realize this would be but marginally improved over pro bono delegations, and would diminish your ROI. However, if such delegations to manual curators resulted in upwards pressure on Steem, then the losses on the front end might be more than made up on the back - particularly if this became a model other delegators followed.
Thanks!