Yeah, that's the basic idea here, how the outcome of this model could be such a humongous surprise still baffles me though...

You might find the dev notes on the RC sytem interesting: https://github.com/steemit/steem/blob/master/doc/devs/2018-08-20-resource-notes.md

There's also this post by @holger80 showcasing part of the code involved... https://steemit.com/steem/@holger80/rc-costs-do-not-depend-on-compute-time

While I think the concept of RCs makes a ton of sense looking into the future... that doesn't excuse the extend of unexpected deviation here...