I'm undecided about the vote power change, but I wanted to respond to this;
Under this scheme, the big whales will need to sell the max on exchanges every week and other people buy their Steem for any real redistribution to occur. That will hold down the price and our competitors will zoom right by us.
This is absolutely what is needed. There is no substitute for redistributing the stake if you want a fairer system with less concentration of power. Even if every whale did this (and they aren't) and even if it were at the maximum rate in all cases and completely uninterrupted (which it isn't), it would still take a full year to redistribute half of the whale stake.
This maybe isn't what people want to hear in terms of trying to drive up the market price but this is the bitter medicine that Steem/it needs to thrive more than anything else.
FWIW, I happen to believe that the path to higher market prices comes from increasing demand by creating a better system -- including a better distribution of stake as soon as possible (which as as said above, still isn't particularly soon) -- and not from trying to reduce supply by holding back redistribution. If the path to a successful outcome is clear, the market will reward that with higher prices, regardless of the amount of whale selling going on (or indeed because of it).
RE: Announcing Steem 0.14.0 Release Candidate