Mining reward is another obsolete part. True reward for supporting Nxt network comes from services that use Nxt. Someone owns a currency exchange and mine blocks to keep his business running. Another one owns a shop and mine blocks to keep his business running. The 3rd person owns a software company that develops programs for Nxt-based services and mine blocks to keep his business running. Selfish miners (those who mine only to earn fees) should be "removed" from the system, they r not interested in success of Nxt and only want to cash-out. If a clone appears such the people will likely jump to another ship, they add very little value to Nxt. All this doesn't mean that we should get rid of fees completely, we still need them as a countermeasure against spamming.
I like the idea, but then, I always liked the idea of "something for something".
+1
Like it or not, most people are selfish. These words from BCNext mostly apply to some ideal world, not ours. IMHO.
But BCNext explicitly states that clones will fix that problem, which they will. There will be room for clones that will reward the forgers who just want to forge, because there are people who want to do just that. This is what I like about the evolving world of the cryptos. The clone won't be bad, it will cater to a different niche. I say good luck to them and will mean it.
But, I am trader and merchant enough to see loads of interesting opportunities for people like me, who want to carve out a niche in Nxt, too

The upshot it also that if Nxt doesn't do this, probably someone else will make a clone who does it.

I wanted to say that, basically, if something is not interesting for selfish people, then this something cannot become widespread, it is doomed to remain restricted to a small community. Well, I'm afraid it will not work if we say "you have to run a Nxt node for the sake of better world!"...
Also, I think that saying "there is a clone that would do what you want" is strategically not good

Just read the "
Proof-of-Learning" article, where "learning" is a bit of a misnomer, but this is already a way of getting a huge adoption. I disagree that even with the "idealistic" setup, it will be restricted. People will play with the "rules".
If you go by the "Proof-of-Learning" model, you could still get huge returns on just running memes.

People will find ways to monetise with the least amount of work anyway.
But I get your point. I am just trying to not let go of mine
