There is a need for minting new coins. Part of what makes bitcoin successful is they promised max 21M coins and they delivered it, still do, will continue to. The promise is important.
MaidSafe promised 2^32 coins. People engaged with the project based on that. They also promised some loan repayment stuff and bnktothefuture shares and conversion stuff, and those promises also matter. Changing the total supply now is a terrible idea because it puts the security of the whole project at risk by breaking the promise.
This was the case in rfc0012, but since rfc0057 and this current design farmers are not paid when clients download. They are only paid when data is uploaded.
I can appreciate where you’re coming from, but as a general point I think we’re going to have some communication difficulties around farming if we are talking about different (old) things. And when the farming has and is changing so frequently discussion can become difficult unless we are very clear about what/which/when we are talking.
But what about every other farmer? They’d rather get the bigger reward from the dilution 
You’d be protecting your initial rewards but missing out on a lot of potential future rewards. The most value comes from attracting the most people (network effects are more important than exclusivity effects).
Ah I see, I thought all nodes were paid at the same time when elders were changed. I see now that each vault is paid their reward when they relocate, so payout is naturally staggered in that way.
Yes, interesting point. Whether checks on data will be part of farming or not, it’s an interesting question. Maybe failed check has some economic consequence but is not part of farming per se, we will have to wait and see.