I like delegates taking ownership for the network, giving them an economic incentive to improve participation by everyone.
I still think the game-theory behind delegates strategy is kind of backwards with weird incentives (e.g., delegates have the incentive to actively damage the network in the case of a price shock; delegates are "forced" to keep pay rates well above market value). This proposal has good intentions, but layered on top of the other backwards incentives might lead to a big problem:
If I'm running a node and I choose a 20% payrate to be my subsistence rate with 100% uptime. My vote total drops from 100% to 95%, and I have no ability to raise my rate, I now have the incentive to turn off my node. You then have to wait for enough people to vote you out, which may not happen quickly - and there is now a dead delegate for an indefinite amount of time.
I generally believe the market should sort it out:
1) delegates should be allowed to set the pay rates to whatever they want (I understand the argument against, perhaps you can allow for a publicized lag time between when it is announced and set. Give users the choice whether or not they want to vote for someone that chooses to run a dynamic operation where payrate tracks bitUSD, for example).
2) If users do not want a delegate in, they should be able to down-vote a delegate.
EDIT: For this plan to work, delegates also have to have the ability to raise their pay rate.