I will start by pointing out that I am new here. But the conversion being only one direction has really confused me. It is not explained anywhere and with the rise of SBD in past week well it just muddied up the waters even further than they were for NEW people like me.
In the article, the author states that he does not want the conversion you are propossing because he feels the SBD gains should go to authors and not STEEM holders. I think this is quite a flawed argument because it is possible for someone to convert steem to btc then btc to SBD. So by making the transfers seamless by implementing bi-directional trading through steemit this would allow for the gains seen in SBD be be more evenly distributed across the two currencies.
The way I see it, Steem should somehow be attached to the SBD price. Not sure how we would implement this kind of mechanism but when Steem rises 10% so too should SBD (Vice Versa).
This environment is still new to me, so I could be completely wrong and not understanding the economics properly.
The point about it benefiting new users is that for most people, earning SBD through author rewards is easier than buying STEEM (or SBD) for real money. As long as the price of SBD is higher, users who get SBD rewards will be able to afford more STEEM for the same amount of SBD. Example - right now, SBD is trading for about $12. If you wanted STEEM, you can get $12 worth of STEEM for every 1 SBD that you earn.