I think I understand your point about the 73 guys sitting on their hands, but I don't agree, as those guys didn't start a company, they invested in an IPO, and so the NXT they own is their property. NXT is more like a 'share' than a currency, and who gives away shares to attract more shareholders.
I think therein lies the catch-22. It's a Proof of Stake system, so you want to hold but holding does nothing to gain more adopters (which is really what you need otherwise you're just 70 guys holding worthless code). I don't see it as shares in a company, shareholders derive value from their equity interest in the performing assets of a company. Nxt
is the performing asset.
This is why I used Ripple as an example, whether you want to call it a pre-mine or not, that's just semantics because that's just what it is. You have a small amount of stakeholders who hold the lion's share of Nxt with the intent of having the Nxt appreciate in value. However, the only way for it to appreciate in value is for others to adopt it and the only way for others to adopt it is to relinquish part of your share. Nxt isn't created out of the air, where does it come from? The stakeholders.
You can assign any value you want to Nxt but without people there's no liquidity. There's no market.
The one guy who started NXT has vanished, so each of those 73 people can do what they like, and I think they're doing pretty well. Giving 1000 NXT coins to 1000 guys would achieve very little, but give 1 Million coins to one talented guy and maybe he'll turn NXT into the decentralised Google of money. That is smarter, and I bet that's what SOME of them are doing. How else can you explain all the activity.
That's probably step 1, you compensate people who can help with the infrastructure. However, as I mentioned time is not on the side of alt-currencies. Time is of the essence so you're probably better off paying developers and spreading out Nxt to new users so that they can test it, tell their friends about it, find bugs, etc. So you give out a million coins. There's still 999 million left. This is why the faucet is so ridiculous and I'm glad that it's being looked at. They should be giving it away by the bucket full right now because a million users will do a hell of a lot more than holding onto that .1%.
As for the activity, it's totally meaningless. A stakeholder can easily set up multiple accounts and transfer Nxt to themselves giving the appearance of activity when in actuality there is none.