RE: Whales - Can the community buy out a portion of your influence?

I really like how this conversation has evolved and I support it's exploration/implementation however I can.

To "keep things simple", I think a good first step would simply be to remove curation rewards.

I can't speak how this change would impact others behavior, but I can explain how it would impact mine. Currently I follow a curation trail (via streemian.com) which makes up the vast majority of my voting. I still do vote manually as I read steemit, but something like 98%+ of my votes are automated for curation rewards.

Removing curation rewards would cause me to cease this behavior and the only things I'd be voting on would be things I actually read. There still may be a case to automatically vote for specific people (who I'd like to support), but it wouldn't be about rewards anymore, it would be about supporting those I'd like to encourage.

I have earned 4.5 MV over the last 30 days through curation (roughly 2.1k SP). I realize that with these changes (removing curation) and by doing a more even distribution (via "interest") it's very likely that I wouldn't earn that much. I might only earn 2-4 MV. My curation currently accounts for somewhere between 0.25% - 0.5% of the total rewards pool (for example, on the 12th of Feb I was 0.34%).

I am ok with that, simply because I believe this change would give a lot more people influence within the system. It may not be what's best for me personally/financially - but I do believe it would be what's best for STEEM and Steemit.