I was actually strongly in favor of the economic changes for the most part (certainly the reduction, in some form, of the power down time), but I don't agree with this:

clearly something was wrong with the initial economic model as the price kept plummeting

Prices fluctuate for all sorts of reasons. If you look at the price chart of STEEM it bears a lot of resemblence to dozens of other cryptos which had a large early pump when supply was small followed by a large and long decline, followed by ________. The point being that we don't know what would have followed. A few months (even a year) of a crypto token declining in value is just not something from which you can draw a sound conclusion.

We've now changed the economy, and we still have price declines. Of course, now the price declines can be blamed on the faster power down time and more dumping, but this too is jumping to a hasty conclusion. The factors that affect a market are boundless and far more difficult than that to characterize.