I can't speak for @ned and @dan, but I imagine that it is there to provide incentive to buy Steem. It gives it a commodity value in addition to the monetary value we assign to it. They want to give the ability to use it, but want to be able to limit abusing it.
I believe the only way to change that would be to change the coding and the parameters of the smart contract. This would mean a hardfork. The top 20 witnesses vote on the hardfork changes. So I believe it would be a matter of coming up with a solution, communicating that to Steem Inc., and having witnesses vote on it.
Anybody feel free to jump in and correct me if I got any of that wrong.
Or becoming a witness? Not sure how well this mirrors civil government but at least in civil gov. if you want to make a change in the laws you have the opportunity to run for office and win if enough others want your changes. How much is 2020 going to be like an election? And I don't think that's a bad thing because there really is no better method for the "will of the people" to be accomplished than for the people to elect a few to make these decisions on their behalf.
Could be, in which case they didn't anticipate the abuse, or believed that somehow the "market" would correct it. I don't think we need the incentive in the first place so we just need to get rid of it, in my not-so-humble opinion.
What incentive? The reward pool? The whole platform is entered around it.
They did anticipate the abuse which is why they included tat section in the whitepaper along with a theory on what would happen.
The monetary incentive to upvote one's self. It should be eliminated.