"The entire structure is based on positive motivation."

That motivation is being hoovered such that it isn't making it to the larger market. I've seen no proposal that might enable that to be done. The upshot from @blocktrades recent proposal is that a modified change along those lines will be undertaken in HF20 - and this will cause greater motivation to vote for whale posts.

Not the fix we need bro.

We need to get ~30% of rewards into the wallets of minnows. It's easy to see how those rewards are being captured such that they never get there.

Whales don't need rewards from the pool as a form of dividend from their investment. There are traditional dividend mechanisms that can suffice, and capital gains is the real reason to invest.

Letting whales dip into the rewards pool for dividends is like letting investors in a broom company walk out the door with the product. In Steemit's case the product is rewards for content.

It's not getting to the sales floor.

The only way it's going to is if the whales dipping into it are deprived of it. End curation rewards. Kill bots. Captchas work all over the web, and 2FA works better. Make VP more egalitarian, so that people are included, rather than excluded, from participation right from the word go.

These things would demonstrably get rewards to content authors, and end a lot of the financial manipulation that is killing Steemit user retention.