Are the 4000 stakes being reduced inline with the number of socks taken out? Or do the devs/marketing/bounties etc. just keep more of the stakes (2433.5/4000)?
Just me being ignored then

The latter. And you can believe that everyone involved hates the fuck out of that.
wait a minute, your saying that the developers will be holding 60% of total NEM?

The solution is to reduce the number of coins. Give 25% to developers, hold 5% for people who might claim later, and 1 million each for all legit users.