I think an upfront price tier model may someday get implemented, if not on the main steemit dapp put out by STINC then certainly on some of the SMTs. They would make things much more clear.
The reason the SP usage is confusing is probably because of how they talk about delegation and "granting RCs as if." It was always the case that they delegated SP and did not give SP. If you signed up at any point, you got a certain amount of delegated SP (with the amount varying over time) and that amount was reduced as you earned your own SP from participating on the platform.
So it seems they haven't changed that, but now that the RC system restricts access so much more than the old bandwidth system used to at the same SP levels, they've added an extra 3SPs worth of RC power for those accounts. They are always taking the actual delegated SP (currently 15) out of STINC's stash. But again, it's just a loan, so they don't really run out. I think there is some maximum time period a person can have the delegation if they stop participating on the platform completely. That's why some people who joined, then left it unused for many months, then started using it again will say they started with less than 15SP. Really they didn't, they just lost some of their free delegation.
They probably are giving the extra 3SP of power directly as RCs, not as additional SP delegation, because they don't have to use any of their SP stash to do that. It's just some code. So this is where we have an opening. We, the community, can pressure them to increase that 3SP and I think they are really listening to us on this. So if we clarify how much really is enough, we're on the same page, and we present that to the witnesses/STINC en masse, we may be able to get that number changed. It's just a code change and they already set their system up so that they can do those sorts of changes without needing a fork or even witness consensus.
On a much larger scale, the whole cryptosphere and blockchain space reminds me somewhat of the introduction of the Internet, itself.
There was a phase we had to go through where the task was to "de-complexify" the thing, and there was a large segment of the original "nerds" who were the early adapters who were kind of resentful of making their "toy" something "Mrs. E.B. Smith, a housewife from Lawrence, Kansas" would be comfortable using. Back then, AOL became the category killer because they threw out all the techno-speak and made usability and an easy interface the front and center of how to get millions of people involved. In due course, more "technical" competitors CompuServe and Prodigy pretty much became "ghosts."
Right now understanding how Steemit works is out of reach of 98% of web/social media users. People just want to make an account and start posting, with a minimal learning curve. And when they have questions, there needs to be simple and easy "tell me like I'm an 8-year old" answers.
How much is "enough?" My non-profit makes 1-2 tweets a day, maybe one post on FB and the rest is responses. Sometimes 5, sometimes 20 a day. If someone comes here with the objective that they want Steemit to become their primary income stream... then they either have to be really patient, OR they have to "pay to play." I'm OK with that. That's how most "Freemium" models work. If you want all the bells and whistles up front, you have to PAY. If you're willing to earn your chops slowly, that's an option too... but you have to do the work.
It's the combination of your first and second point that are the problem for Steemit. When people decide to "pay to play" there's a certain level of service they expect with that. Meanwhile, STINC practically has everyone back at DOS.
There is a staggering learning curve to succeed on here even if you do buy STEEM, unless all you do is upvote yourself. And if you do that, expect to get downvoted and ridiculed by the longterm big money players, who believe in the "purity" of voting mostly for others.
Of course, they do it in a great big circle jerk between other big accounts like theirs, but they still stand in judgment and even penalize the self-voter who simply made a big investment and doesn't know how else to profit from it.