I'm generally easy and happy for experiments to happen. Do like the idea of different downvote pool, it's one of those things which I'm not sure why wasn't implemented at the start but then again I wasn't around at the start, maybe they didn't need it then?
As far as incentive to clean up goes, well I can kind of understand the lack of desire to downvote/flag. I don't go as far as to consider it "bullying" like some other people seem to (yay for weaselling XD) but would be pretty happy if I could obliterate potential earnings on plagiarism/art theft (which is most of what I'll downvote though I have downvoted tag spam in the past if I was in a grouchy enough mood) or at least put a serious dent in it without impacting my ability to do my preferred upvoting actions.
I think they needed it but didn't think of it and then, once it was going no one wanted to change it. Some of the largest accounts now were in that group of people.
with the curve, the higher the payout, the more damage done so there is not a great deal of incentive to buy votes for plagiarists as they will be obviously knocked down. I think there will be a normalization period but in short order, the change will do some good. If implemented of course.
Hm, well the only problem I can see with that is when you have random angry people randomly angrily downvoting things like the one that I've seen randomly pinging people for no apparent reason (guess they disagree with everyone's rewards and thinks no one should post anything at all? XD). Seems like that would sting a bit more :)