On the flipside, with all the talk about Hardfork 21, maybe the Steem witnesses can also look at Palnet as a case study to see what lessons can be learned here, especially with the differences in rewards structure, etc.

Yep. smoke.io also has 50/50 and while has less users, the distribution has worked well there.

As for whether this ends up with positive or negative path, I guess the main point is that this will end up in an entirely different path, altogether.

Change is needed, and likely always will be required. The benefit of decentralization is that it will continually change through usage anyway.