I still can't see the problem. What is 38% of a completely speculatively valued token? Those that are treating this like a pay cut are behaving as though the money comes from the the amount of steem you have access to and not the actual value of that steem. 38% of a rewards pool that would be split between over 1000x more engagers than bloggers was never a high number. The mechanics of using posts vs comments doesn't change! So I don't understand how this "steem isn't just steemit" point is relevant to a split reward pool.

You say steem is not just steemit yet maybe fail to recognise the inherent flaw in a shared reward pool when comment threads become embedded on other websites. That reward pool would not increase enough with a less super linear reward pool because curators will always gain more curation by staying on steemit.com. But this is to become much bigger than steemit and engagers are or at least will be our most valuable asset.

Here's my defense https://steemit.com/comments/@beanz/justification-for-comment-reward-pool-without-curation-rewards

Without this feature the hard-fork is pointless me.