That’s exactly what the long-term solution is likely to look like (as I understand it). These grants are just a short-term interim solution to get the ball rolling and encourage some new faces and competition into the mix (as exemplar followees). I think this is explained in the announcement.
Taking into account that we’re printing about half a billion dollars in rewards per year, we probably want to make them useful.
I think your right to point out the privilege and responsibility that followees hold. There are certainly cases where they should be held to a higher standard - I hope this will happen over time. But first we need more skilled people to get involved, and we need to incentivise people to follow neurons that can evidence that they do a better job than other neurons. On a related note, you may find this week’s IC-OS proposal interesting in this respect →
I think @skilesare is onto something with his suggestions. I think ultimately we’re going to need consequences for irresponsible voters (but then we’d need a way of bating/detecting irresponsible voters, and this would come with a whole load of implications - but I still think it’s going to be needed in some shape or form). Competition is pointless without a selection pressure.