Thanks for stating some insightful and valid thoughts. I note that @steemalliance is addressing your last point, perhaps differently than you'd recommend, but it is being undertaken.
Steem Engine is pretty cool.
Going forward, the number of dapps is going to increase at unknown, but probably accelerating rates, and poorly tuned nodes would have multiplied that burden obscenely.
It's impossible to state fees from SMTs would be able to provide more substantial funding, as there is practically no experience with such a product. Like Steem, SMTs are novel technology, and difficult to accurately price, or analyze for costs and benefits.
Most of us are convinced (I am) that SMTs are gonna be homerun financially, but if they come out flawed, they're gonna be a nightmare instead. I am encouraged that Stinc hasn't just rushed something out and started flailing away at bugs, flaws, and disappointment, as @drugwars has, for example.
I'm presently almost convinced that in the long run decreasing the expense of running nodes and encouraging dapps to run their own may actually be more critical to the success of Steem than SMTs.
Nodes are the key to decentralization, and if costs can continue to come down while computer capacity continues to increase, eventually extremely robust decentralization will be able to protect the blockchain from threats regardless of their source.
Nothing is more important than security from existential threat.
Lastly, I cannot judge your competence, but things are not always just what they seem to be, and it is often useful to consider the quality of optics with which one regards things. There may be extremely important reasons for specific undertakings being priority over others, and we just can't know without more information than is availed us.
Thanks!