I doubt Vitalik has the emotional sharpness to force something like this through the social-ideological inertia that surrounds him.. Be Brave, young one!
This is not an easy task, for anyone. There is a good chance the Bytemaster, and Bitshares will have this problem in the near future. Best case, he'll piss at least some people off, and things will fracture.
But with the consensus building amplification of the wisdom of the crowd systems like Canonizer.com, this is natural and easy. THE most important thing is to know, concisely and quantitatively, what everyone is thinking, why, and what it would take to convert them / make them happy. All stuff that happens naturally at Canonizer.com. Right now, the sheepish herd is about to run over the POW clif. For this, and other similar issues in the future, how do you get the entire sheepish herd to change directions, on a dime, and be sure you've succeed before you commit. And even better, keep the crowd educated about the evils of POW, and so on, before they get too far out of hand.