Let me try again. Time cancels out of the equations in a steady state process. The RATE has nothing to do with anything other than determining the PERCENTAGE of the biosphere that will be undergoing speciation at any given INSTANT in time.
Considering there are something like 100 million species on the planet right now, the speciation rate would have to be infitesimal not to see ANY at any given moment. It would have to be so small in fact, that it would violate the rate evolutionists claim is demonstrated in the fossil record.
In other words, speciation rates, calculated from the fossil record, should allow us to see substantial speciation in the biosphere, especially among organisms with high reproduction rates and short lifespans.
And ring species don't count, since they are an historical construct. The theory predicts we should be seeing speciation WITHIN a percentage of the biosphere AT THIS INSTANT in time, not over a geographic area, not over a time period of a thousand years, but RIGHT NOW.
And changing environmental conditions don't count either. Environmental conditions determine which speciations SURVIVE, NOT which speciations OCCUR.
I still don't think that evolution can be called a steady-state process, but I see what you're saying. I'm not sure about the math, though. It is generally assumed that genetic mutations are the source of mutations in the evolutionary process. As such, evolution would predict that smaller organisms (with less genetic information) would mutate faster than large organisms.
I'm not an evolutionary (or any kind of) biologist, but from what I understand of evolution, this prediction would be made. As such, the rate of speciation should be weighted toward the smaller species. Figuring out how the weighting would go is beyond my knowledge, but I think we would agree that it should be there if the evolutionary hypothesis is correct, and the source of mutations is genetic mutation.
The point this is bringing me to, is that I'm not sure that we are observing these small (I'm referring to single-celled organisms, bacteria, etc.) organisms closely enough to really notice all speciations that may occur. Even in the case of insects, I think that, as a previous poster pointed out, we find new species fairly regularly without being able to say if they're new species or newly developed species.
So I agree that this avenue of analysis is valid and is a good way to test the theory of evolution, but you seem to be assuming it has been done and has failed, while I don't believe it's been done yet.