The goal is to establish transaction costs so that the block chain will be able to compute how much to charge businesses that use the block chain. Up until now with steemit it has been just to see how the mechanics of this system worked and if it could keep up from a functioning standpoint. Since the functioning has been established management needed a way to compute cost per transaction, so now we measure in mana those transactions.

My thoughts exactly. Steemit is groundbreaking – there's never been anything like it before. Presumably when it was first launched, it didn't occur to dan or ned how much the bandwidth costs might be once it all got going. Now that is all having to be recalibrated. That's my take on it anyway.
Maybe it was my own stupidity for posting just before the hardfork took place. The upvotes came rolling in – and then suddenly stopped. But I didn't die! And my voting strength has returned to pre-HF20 levels.
I might well be wrong – haven't quite got my brain round all of this – but I think the RCs system probably won't be that much different from the bandwidth system in practical terms, only the process will be more visible.