Hmm🤔, true.

That's a really good idea for making it easier for new people to get traction on here when no whales (or even dolphins) are following them to give them bit upvotes. And while in some ways this is a side conversation, since this post is really about scaling the tech, not how to increase the size of the user base, the two are definitely related. So let's play.

So yes, would be good to give new people a chance to more powerfully upvote each other the same way old-timers can powerfully upvote each other. However, there is also something to be said for providing someone who has invested their own money in the platform with some additional stake in things like how rewards get allocated. The same goes for those who have invested many months of their time in posting and growing quality content on the platform. I don't think bandwidth, the ability to post more, is adequate compensation for that investment.

And speaking of investment, we also want STEEM to be an attractive one, even for people who don't intend to post. It may seem like SP wouldn't matter to them at all, but not so, because now they can delegate their SP at an interest rate of about 25-30%. That's a darned good return! In fact, I'm currently developing an advisory relationship with a socially conscious investing firm, and guess which coin I'm going to be recommending at their #1 play! But this only works if other people have a reason to pay those returns to them to buy their delegated SP. And the only reason someone buys it is so that they have bigger upvotes. 

The problem is for people who have no money to invest at all and also haven't been here that long, so haven't invested sufficient time either. I don't know that there is a way to equalize for that, or if there even should be. Might the initial SP delegation be bigger? Yes, I think that would be good. I think now the investment of time needed to get any traction is just too long. I also think that delegation should remain longer after the person starts buying small amounts of STEEM they can afford. Right now if you buy only $20 of STEEM you basically just replace some of your delegated amount with that. You get no additional upvote ability. Ouch! I keep trying to explain to people they need to invest at least $100 to get any kind of decent upvote, but not everyone has $100. Do we not want them on STEEM dapps?

So there is definitely room for improvement in how we scale the user base successfully without churn. But I don't think it's as radical as decoupling SP from upvote power.

You are missing the main point here. The more users onboard, the more investors onboard and the more 1 Steem will be worth.
With 200 million users you might only get 0.1 Steem per post, but if 1 Steem is worth 1000 dollars, you'll still get a decent reward.