>Very un-gentlemanlike...

That's impossible. My profile specifically states that I am indeed a gentleman.

>Also you fail to understand that I am not against curators personally, I didn't create this posts because I wanted to eliminate their gains. I created this post to improve the system and increase the value of steem.

Yes, and your plan to "increase the value of steem" is by eliminating the incentives for curators - to "eliminate their gains." 

>This is not the argument actually. This is a response to a stupid argument which is that people will stop voting if curation rewards are eliminated.

No, that was a response to the notion that "rewards aren't necessary because people will vote anyway." You have argued this point repeatedly - that users don't need monetary incentives to vote for content. The exact same is true for people who post online and do it without monetary incentives. There is no difference at all in the two arguments. Since *this* system is based on incentives for both content creators and content consumers, because they both perform necessary tasks of creation and evaluation, the reward incentives are for both types of users. If you eliminate one or heavily favor one over the other, then the incentive structure becomes imbalanced and the results become skewed, as we have observed. 

>Posting rewards do not harm the system in any way, they actually bring value to the site unlike curation rewards.

What is your proof that the existence of curation rewards "harms" the system? And why do you believe that posting rewards do not? And are you not aware of the spam, plagiarism, and sybil attempts to game the system? I don't see how you can simply say that one incentive is bad and the other is good when both *can* be gamed, both *are* gamed, and both were designed to achieve specific results for the platform. But for all of the gaming that occurs (and was known *would* occur), the incentive structure has been proven to work for both creation and curation.

>Your argument would be valid only if posts had the same bad incentives that curation rewards have which is not the case.

My argument is valid because people do post and do vote on other sites without monetary incentives. This is a fact. Let's not pretend that voting is done on other sites for free, therefore, we don't need to incentivize it. And let's not pretend that only voters are driven by the desire to earn. This isn't why curation is incentivized on Steemit. It's incentivized because this platform was created explicitly for the purposes of rewarding social media users for their social media activities.  

>There is only a tiny amount of people who actually make any significant money from curation.

This is irrelevant. The average user isn't supposed to be making "significant money" from upvoting posts in the first place. And I would argue that the average user isn't supposed to be making "significant money" from posting either. But users do have the *opportunity* to earn *some* money from being active on the platform. This isn't a job and this isn't supposed to be a UBI. It's simply an onboarding mechanism for a cryptocurrency. That's one of very few things that this site actually does well, in my opinion. 

>Curations rewards are not the same has authors rewards, please don't take things out of context.

Nothing was taken "out of context." I was simply applying the arguments to posting rewards.

I want to add more. If one posts garbage, it can be downvoted and ones reputation will be harmed. There is both positive/negative feedback system on posting reward. However, there is no feedback on one's voting itself, and there is no costs from voting.

Equating no curation reward with no posting reward does not make sense IMO, and I agree that badly designed (mis-aligned) incentives is the target here.

>This is the saddest part actually...

No, the saddest part is that the rewards are *only* 12% because they have been reduced from 50% to 25%, minus the reverse auction. This is the reason why you're seeing more automation for voting. It has to do with that whole *incentive* thing. When the rewards for spending time/energy on a specific task are reduced, you tend to get less of it or a lower quality, or both. Or you get automation, which can result in the same outcome.

Less vote is an obvious result, but voter apathy is not necessarily true. And kind of apathy seems rather good than wrongly incentivized votes.

I intentionally used "make profit" to make it easier, but actually it's compensate loss from inflation. SP holders who don't curate are losing about 8% annually, but if they curate, it will decrease to around 4~6%.
Meanwhile, STEEM holders are losing 9.5% a year, since they don't get 15% of inflation reward. Merely removing curation reward keeps the difference (15%) same, but if we change curation reward to inflation reward, the difference will become around 33%.

Details can differ, but I think the core idea is the same, as I mentioned in my last sentence. Voting is not free lunch.

>I think steem power should be removed entirely, many in the community agree with this.

this isn't a bad idea.... 

>I think that inflation can be used to incentivize people to buy steem, I actually created a post about it.

This is lol-bad.  Lets print money and give it away for free... that will increase its value.   Spoiler alert -- it won't.

> how you are going to profit from steem" and instead think of how " to increase the value of the platform"

New users don't care about increasing the value of the platform. Like it or not, they're in it to make profit (as are most voters and authors) (I.E. you're being paid for this article therefore you are making profit)
>They are not voting today already, 90% of votes is done by bots

That means 90 percent of author rewards are also currently given out (diversified) by bots

>How eliminating curation rewards will send authors away from the site?

I and many others would leave

>Why would the platform be any less sustainable?

Because most of the voters that give the platform its value would leave. The loss of voters would cause demand for steem to leave, and the value of steem to plummet.
>users will have more influence which will incentivize them to buy more steem power and the site will be a lot more valuable in the eyes of investors.

No, it will alienate many people who are voting to get curation rewards (causing them to leave and leave only authors) and steemit to look unattractive to investors.

>Do you really expect businesses to integrate a content reward system run by 90% bots? 

Yes, Google uses bots yet many businesses depend on their search engine.
Again, I'd recommend you read this article:
http://www.investopedia.com/university/economics/

As well as this article:
http://www.investopedia.com/university/economics/economics3.asp

> Curation ( 80-90% of which is done by bots

You've repeated this figure many times in this thread but it is wrong. Only about 20-30% of _vote power_ comes from bots (vote count is meaningless in a stake-weighted system) and even that probably understates the human influence because a lot of that voting may be _performed_ by a bot but is _decided_ by a human primarily for influence and not profit-maximizing reasons (for example deciding on their favorite posters or types of posts they want to support, or in some cases as a delegated vote decided by another human).

One may argue that curation trails will have no income to sustain. But I think curation guilds can have alternative way to compensate curators, e.g. writing a post.

Others have written on this. It's not my expertise. But I'd see the main cons (to eliminating curation rewards) as being: 

(1) A lack of incentive to keep the site organized and clean. I know you addressed this in your post, but I still feel it would be a risk to throw that away (until proven otherwise, maybe on a testnet first?). 

(2) Part of me believes this thing works much better when people have a variety of things to do, can have fun, and stay occupied. A larger comment reward pool will be huge, since not everyone wants to write long articles. I'd like to see the site design accommodate (and the community be able to accept) some shorter length content and alternative types of content as well (news, links, video, music, FAQs, etc.). 

But the idea of paying people to vote is very interesting. Voting is something a lot of people can do and  it may attract users who are not as interested in posting or commenting. 

Could rep systems be tied into voting somehow, so that there still would be some incentive to curate the site, aside from a monetary one?

>Voting activity i think will naturally become more insular

That's a good point and I've said this before steem will have so many different kind of content that is completely irrelevant to most people that curating this content will make no sense. Why would people care about upvoting family picture of people they never heard of? This is why the concept of curating for money is flawed because it goes against the natural will of the people.

Influence on this platform has no value unless the platform succeeded already.
Chicken and egg.

>Eliminating curation rewards would make this game a lot clearer because it will give influence to those who are active.

This is not necessarily true. Big players still have more influences even if curation rewards is killed. They're active: they're curating manually or with a bot or delegated to others.

Yeah, I'd still vote, but the game wouldn't hold the same appeal.

I recognize that your way could be given a chance.
Hopefully the new curves will mitigate against negatives you list.

I have noticed the lack of  0.0 payouts in cashout, so the top must have come down some.
Maybe the whales are voting less?
Trending is definitely lower.

I think most of your qualms are corrected with a less extreme reward curve.

Cutting curation rewards would be akin to chopping of an arm and a leg, they are 1/3 of the equation here, and major surgery.
As a low reward content creator, no fault but my own, curation awards make being here a little more joyful as I can earn something, at least.