An immediate shift to 16 or lower is obviously more drastic, and it also implies a major departure from the original plan--not just tinkering and improvement, but a total and somewhat arbitrary shift. Now consider the potential of introducing PoS sometime in the future: another major departure.
My point is that this seems great for those of us with existing SMC holdings, but consider from the perspective of someone just getting into the coin. The existing community mines millions of SMC at relatively low diff, then goes and quarters the reward, and even introduces a means of further rewarding those that already have large holdings. It comes across almost as a premine on a larger scale. Although a coin that started out with the proposed new specs would interest a lot of people, wouldn't a reboot as drastic as the one being proposed cause some resentment among prospective new miners, given that it would effectively create a caste system?
They had everytime in the world to jump on the ship like eveyone else, they didnt, sorry but thats their choice nothing i can decide for them or feel sorry for. And for the newcomers the change isnt something that happened over a night, it is still not even implemented so if theyre such true belivers the still have their change of buying in and/or mining now. . . dont see that is a problem if they want in they can start now before the changes take place the rest no sayers of them is just to late, and thats life. The even was a poll up for voting, if they wanted another block reward their was plenty of options in that to choose from, again to late to the party and now cries to parents that the cake is gone just because every kid that wanted cake got their in time instead, and he just wanna be out and do other things then. every coin that wanna last need to make improvements to do so, and this is one step in making Smc better!