The insane inflation that steem has is completely unecessary and as bobsunday said the price will be impossible to sustain.
A fork could be done to reduce steem inflation from 300% - 100% to about 10% and steem would work perfectly fine, much better actually. This would mean that the reverse split won't even be needed,not for decades at least.
They could make the system much more attractive to investors by simply stopping printing so many coins. There is no real purpose for having so much inflation, they are shooting themselves in the foot with the insane printing.
I have discussed this with smooth and apparently the inflation is there as a psychologic incentives to buy steem power ( your balance is growing when you have steem power ). As we have seen recently this incentives does not work, people want to grow the value of their account not the number of SP and investors are not falling for this. I would also argue that a growing number of steem power have a negative psychological effect ; users think they earn money without doing anything which means that many don't bother curating and actually work to earn.
Want to keep talking human psycho? Well, If you lock someone in a prison this person would be a lot more eager to want out than someone sitting in the same cell with the keys. Which is why a shorter lock time period would probably result to more people locking their steem.
There are also much better ways to incentivizes people to buy steem power, as OP said you could reduce the lock time period, you could also increase curation rewards percentage.
So you ask what is going to change if we completely remove the unecessary inflation?
Not much, your steem power balance will remain exactly the same instead of growing but your account value is much more likely to grow. Most importantly the price of steem will be allowed to breath and grow which is essential to pay for the increasing amout of bloggers.
As OP said speculation is not evil, it is actually the lifeblood of every crypto. Steemit thought it could do without but it can't.
Some links where I have been discussing this matter
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558366.1040
Regarding Op's proposals they are meant to incentivize people to buy steem power. I would argue that the first proposal is not even necessary because there is already an incentive to buy steem power which is curation rewards, the more you have power the more steem you get, maybe they should increase curation rewards but the system is working as intented.
Also the very reason we are concerned about people powering up or down is because of this crazy inflation, remove it completely and you will see that powering up won't be so needed to keep the price steady. The second proposal however is good in my opinion, people will be much more likely to convert to steem power with a much reduced time lock period.
Good points. I would like to hear the counter arguments too.
There is one argument which is that a low steem price allow for faster power distribution . Steem inflation was designed with this in mind with a "distribution" period.
However I don't think this is necessarily true. When you have a low price sure people can get more share % for less money but there is also a lot less people buying because of lack of confidence in the project. If the inflation was only 10% there would be a lot more buyers/traders and overall interests in the platform and sellers wouldn't have to sit on their steem, so the redistribution would probably happen at the same pace in both cases. A shorter time lock period would actually allow for much faster distribution as people who want out would be able to sell all their share quickly.
I am personnaly not worried about distribution at all, it may take time but it is only going to get better and it doesn't prevent the platform from functionning.
I'm also interested to hear some counter arguments.
People who want out quickly can already sell their accounts directly, although not everyone know that, nor convenient enough to do that. Perhaps it's good to add an account trading market on the site.
I hear what you are saying. The distribution will not matter if people don't want the Steem in the first place. Whereas if there is a lot of demand then distribution will happen anyway as people sell off to make profits. Good points.
My initial reaction to @bobsunday's solution #2 was complete disagreement, but your comparison to a prisoner with the keys in the cell made me soften that a little. It's still speculation that it would happen that way, and a major change like that would be drastic. I still think there is immense value in binding people together for a couple years. It puts us all in the same boat, and gives anyone with stake the common goal of wanting it to be worth more.
The current lock time period is fine. My proposal is mainly about removing all the unnecessary inflation and you could do that without changing any other settings.
However if people can invest in steem at 10% inflation without locking their steem they might be reluctant to power up and commit for so long unless there is a good incentive. Which is why reducing time lock period make sense here but you could also increase curation rewards or reward SP holders with some of the newly created money as OP said ( however that would mean inflating steem more than necessary to pay steem power holder so we are back to square one).
If you want people to power up it should not be seen as an inconvenience. The reason people buy steem power today its because its the only way to invest in steem without getting hit by the inflation, this is an inconvenience.
If people could power up and get their coins fully back in a month you will see many people that wouldn't have powered up before that would do it now, because they don't feel trapped and you will see a lot less people powering down.
I personnaly don't think that locking people's coin is necessary to achieve these things and create a great community. Do you think the people involved in steemit are involved because they have a stake that they can't take out? Do you think people participate more because they have some steem power that will take 2 years to withdraw? I don't. I think that locking people's coins for such a long period actually prevent many people from investing and participating in the platform .
Give me one reason why there would be less people powered up than it currently is if we shorten the lock time period?
I can't think of any
People who want to participate, earn and curate will have to power up, so the time lock period makes no difference, people will have to power up regardless if they want to upvote and make money. And I think there will be a lot more people that would participate in steem with a shorter lock time period.
Think about this, if someone has a lot of money and wants to earn a bit from curating he will be obliged to commit for 2 years, this is a no go for most people.