That is what I respect most about you. Unlike other exchange services, you are heavily invested in the platform. It is great you are starting this conversation. I don't think delegation business would be a good long-term strategy though. I have thought about it, and for me to be able to buy SP delegation and break even I would have to spend it mostly on self-upvotes rather than on curating. As you have already said that would just encourage more self-upvotes and second-hand vote selling.
But I am sure you have thought more about these matters than me and you would be more knowledgeable.
Part of my idea is to make it profitable to buy an SP delegation. Since a few whales currently have the majority of the voting SP, there are only a few ways to get a reasonable number of curators who can impact votes: 1) have the whales sell off most of their SP to new curators or 2) have the whales delegate SP to new curators.
I think 2 is the most feasible route in the short term, which then just leaves it down to what method should whales use to delegate their Steem: they can either directly negotiate with a curator for a split of the curation rewards or they can use an automated system that new curators can purchase from.
Originally, I was directly negotiating such deals, but that doesn't result in a lot of new curators. With the automated system, we get a lot more potential curators. But for this to work, such curators need to have a blockchain where they can profit from it.
...Or maybe work with successful curation guilds who have a reputation of giving back value to the steem ecosystem through manual curation, supporting them to replicate their similar models for better reach. @curie comes top of mind, having distributed over 1m SBD (~5% of Steemit total) to quality creators, and a lot to active curators.
See the post from @stellabelle with her menu of potential curators for whales to delegate to. It has met with great applause from minnows, but only she and @fulltimegeek seem to be interested in participating as whales.
Maybe there is something in her idea that could work for you and others. Here's the post if you haven't seen it: https://steemit.com/voteselling/@stellabelle/dear-freedom-and-whales-here-s-a-sp-delegatee-menu-to-solve-the-vote-selling-problem
This is only generally true.
I would pay 100% of curation rewards, and neither sell votes, nor self vote, for such a delegation, because I am not here for rewards.
There are others besides myself that would do this too.
A society is more than just an economy.
@fulltimegeek and @stellabelle have proved this.
Automate such contractual arrangements, and I will be the first in line, and I will not be alone.