Yes all kinds of things, including developers. Maybe we should instead dedicate a 'small income stream' to cat pictures and use the rest for developers.

I see the problems, but I think that development of the native chain and posting are really two very different things and I dont know what the advantage to throw them into one box would be.
Posting is a feature of the chain, development of the infrastructure is there to realise these features.
We would still be able to controll the funding via our witness votes.

I think implementing a clear separation between these is well motivated.

Steemit is responsible for development. Do you think it makes sense for Steemit to assign itself 80% of the initial stake via a ninja-mine and then not be responsible for development? What was the ninja-mine for? If the answer was putting money into Steemit's owners pockets and then getting to the point where we invite the 20% to pay (again) for development then we should all just recognize we have been played and move on to a new project with lessons learned.

I do fully agree. But we cannot impose there to be a special actor that is doing what is right because we want it. In the end steemit will use their stake to make profits just as anyone else. We can hope, but it seems they are failing. The best solution would to get them to burn most of their tokens and then step out of the way. That wont happen so we have to find a way that seems realistic, or simply power down and leave to find a competitor where not 30% is controlled by a single entity that has a questionable vision for the future.

How will this differ in new mechanism? Won't funding go to the popular devs and ideas from lesser known ones have a huge chance of going unnoticed (or noticed and unfunded). Or worse, where big stakeholders (say those with an 80% ninja mine) vote for themselves to get funding and then accomplish little or nothing.

Stake abuse cannot be prevented. Not now and probably not in the future. We have to hope that locking up funds for some time gives people a more long term position and have tools to drive out black sheep (crab in the bucket).

There might be some advantages and the funding structure for development should be different than for posts, but this quikcly becomes messy. So I think the psychological change would be the main driver. Just as the inflation is. When people vote, they are in fact giving money away, but because it is an inflation they dont realise it as such.

But the fundamental problem remains. And that is linked to steem not really having a logical business model with a natural flow of resources. Nobody agrees where the value is coming from because there is no satisfactory answer. Game theoretically steem is not solid and this is the root of all these discussions. In order to move on we need to find an honest vision for the future and real revenue streams instead of magic money.