Is NewSteem Alive and Kicking?

I was surprised and cautiously optimistic to see the face of the #NewSteem after the hardforks. Maybe a little too early excited, but my closing says it all:

The only thing that matters now is to persevere. We cannot back down on our NewSteem attitude and we cannot just see it as a necessary push, and then fade out until we go back to the old attitude.

The signs I see and hear about not long after that are worrisome. It's not those with the NewSteem attitude who backed down (or maybe some are disappointed and therefore not as enthusiastic). The signs tell that the abusers gave us a little time to breathe after the hardforks, before they regrouped and adapted to the new reality.

I have to be honest with you. I don't believe there is or there will be enough motivation in our community as a whole to fight abusers, given that when you go to war there are casualties. And enough people want to live peacefully.

A call to arms call won't help unfortunately, I believe. It doesn't help in my case, for example, even though I understand what is going on and I hate that it is happening all around us on Steem.

From my perspective, I see two possible solutions out of this situation.

1. Professional Abuse Fighting Force

By professional I mean knowing what they are doing, having matching means to fight back and being paid to do it.

There are already teams fighting abuse who I'm sure know what they are doing, and I'm not exactly sure what their situation is, but by the looks of it, they are losing the war, which means they either are unmanned, have not enough means or better incentives would be required for more trained and especially resilient people to join this fight.

Fighting for the benefit of Steem is altruistic, but during this time the adversaries collect huge rewards and grow bigger, form networks and better tactics and strategies.

2. Give up the main reward pool altogether after SMTs

The reasoning is simple. No rewards - no abuse, at least not for the reward pool, which is the most abused of all probably.

The rewards will shift from the main reward pool to individual SMT reward pools, much like there are now for tribe tokens.

I'm sure there will be abuse at the SMTs level too, as it is at the tribes level now. But it is much more pinpointed and each tribe and / or community is free to deal with abuse in its yard as it sees fit.

---

I don't know which of the solutions would be better.

The problem with the first solution is that it may be perceived as a way to apply censorship at the ecosystem level, not as a way to fight certain abusers.

The problem with the second solution is that it can be perceived as a capitulation to abusers, although there are other strong reasons why the main reward pool should be dropped after SMTs, like drastically reducing the inflation and increasing the demand for STEEM on the market.

Which one do you think would be better? Or do you have a better solution? Or do you think we shouldn't change anything?