It is not a hard and fast rule (nothing is; everything is up to voters) but it is the number one reason I've heard for why some proposals aren't supported, including yours.
My proposal received more votes than any other and in terms of voted SP it is still within the top positions. So it's not a problem related to lack of support. As I stated, the Return-Proposal was moved 3.6 M SP up (over night by one single voter, a top witness), so that mine does no longer receive funds.
That's the nature of voting. There is more stake in favor of not funding your proposal than funding it. The solution is to make your proposal more compelling.
It is absolutely intended that people may increase votes on return in order to de-fund undesired proposals, change votes to attempt to reorder proposals in terms of priority, etc. Or even just change one's mind about what is worth funding. The voting is dynamic.
If we would have more big stakeholders, I would fully agree, but as it is now, I would change that statement to 'That's the nature of top witnesses voting' :)
There is more than enough in the pot already to fund more proposals and it keeps growing quite well. If those SBD are not being used for projects, I'm asking myself why we don't build kind of an automated 'burn STEEM machine' to at least support the price a bit in the meantime.
I don't think that there will appear many more interesting/expensive proposals any time soon, so in my opinion, with the given funding barrier, the pot will just keep growing without any relevant benefits for us.
We do have a lot of big stakeholders. Out of 16 million SP votes on return, only the top 3 votes are over 1 million, and those total about 6 million. The majority of the votes are from a large number of smaller accounts.
Even more to the point, setting aside Steemit Inc, there is probably something like 150 million SP and another 100 million STEEM which could potentially power up. There is an enormous amount of additional stake which could vote, far, far more than return.
In other words, make your proposal more compelling.
There is no inherent benefit from solely from spending money. If stakeholders aren't convinced that the benefits are worth the costs, we are better off not spending it and avoiding even more Steem (whether in the form of STEEM or SBD) flooding the market and driving the price down.
If the proposals are compelling I have no reluctance to support them, but if they aren't, then I'd rather take the benefit in lower inflation.
I'm all in favor of that in fact that's why I run @burnpost and vote for it. That being said, keeping the funds in the SPS treasury has similar benefit (not being sold on any market), plus a bit more flexibility to fund compelling future proposals, should they be made. For example, at Steemfest a lot of people noted the lack of good proposals for marketing and other community building. I agree and I will look for these proposals to support. But I still won't support them if the proposal itself isn't strong.
Ok, thanks for your enlightening answers and for upvoting my hidden comments. I'm currently not sure, which way to choose now, but I will do my best to find one that works for me.
Even if there is not much new to discover in SteemWorld currently, I made good progress so far and I'm sure that, when I'm done with the things that are waiting in the pipeline, there will be more investors convinced about the value of my work.
Since I'm a purely creative coder, I'm having a hard time with presenting planned features. Most of the SteemWorld has been built intuitively in a creative flow without much planning and this is how I function best.