>Some expectation management (you mentioned elsewhere)

Yes - I have been mentioning this since last fall. The expectations of new users and many older users are absurdly high, especially for those who have never run a blog before or don't (maybe don't know how to) put in the necessary work to make their blog "successful." These expectations of large rewards (assuming that everyone has an equal chance of being a regular trending author) or expectations that there shouldn't be such a gap between popular/trending posts and the average user's posts, are quite ridiculous. 

I get that a lot of the "trending" content on Steemit is garbage - there's certainly a lot of Steem/Steemit-centric circle-jerking being done and there's plenty of collusion by many users who were able to take advantage of some pretty messed up protocols and abuses last summer and through the winter. But even acknowledging that, the notion that some user from Thailand who knows nobody here and doesn't understand English *ought* to be earning some arbitrary amount of rewards just isn't practical. 

The problem with advertising Steem/Steemit as almost exclusively a money-making platform is that users come in *expecting* that they'll make money. Instead of feeding this false hope, it would do a lot of good if there was a coherent explanation of how the stake-based system works and what the average user could expect - not just now, but in the future when "mass adoption" might occur.

And I'm not talking about what the average *trending* author could expect...I'm talking about the average person who joins Steemit, has no large following outside of the platform, and doesn't have the time/motivation to put in the necessary networking in order to increase their following/earnings. 

There should be a hell of a lot more focus on *managing* expectations and ensuring that they are *reasonable* for new users. This is a place where you can *potentially* earn some money if you're willing and able to put in the time and effort, as little as that might be.

>...a more flat income distribution where eventual income is less dependent on how much you already have...

I think that calling it "income" is part of the expectation issue. But I don't think there needs to be flatter distribution. What I think is wrong with your statement though, is that it ignores the entire concept of stake/investment. If you have bought or earned a larger share in the system, then your "ROI" should be higher than someone who has bought/earned very little to nothing, all else being equal. Of course, if you're hustling to create content and network with people to gain a larger audience, you might out-earn the larger stakeholder who simply votes on content and collects the "interest" on their holdings. 

In my opinion, that's actually one of the great things about this platform. And it's the larger stakeholders who can make that kind of growth possible for previously unknown users.

>...a cap on maximum pay per post...

I actually agree that this might be a good idea. Maybe make it a certain percentage of the overall pool that can be allocated at the time. However, I don't think it needs to be ridiculously low. 

On that subject of caps, I was not in favor of eliminating the four post rewards limit. I've heard the arguments against it, but I don't think they're very compelling, especially with the ability to see everything that happens on the blockchain. There's no reason why a user should be able to post 25 times per day and receive a large portion of the daily pool simply because of auto-voting. Yes, we want people to be free to post as much as they want, but that doesn't mean that they have to be able to earn 100% of the rewards allocated to them by the same user accounts all day long. 

If you look at the top trending authors over the last 30 days, you'll see that a lot of them are doing this very thing. Instead of publishing a couple of good posts per day, they simply vomit 5-10 or more per day and rely on their auto-voters to give them $10 - $20 or more per post. 

Perhaps more attention should be given to the voting side of the equation and some diminishing returns for allocation can be applied...and maybe some reduced returns for curators.