I couldn't care less about the fundamentals of rewards like you said it only matters to the people who are here. Its a case of thinking that steem/steemit will remain like this forever which if it does I think most of us would leave.

Focusing on rewards is spending time and energy focusing on the minutia. I'd rather focus on improving the user experience, acquisition and retention with less focus on the money to begin with and not make that the be all and end-all of why everyone is here.

The only focus is to get more users not just on steemit but any dapp that uses it. STEEM is ot steemit and this debate has gotten old and it was pointless from the begining. Just my 2 steem on the subject