Powering down takes 13 weeks- there is no powering down immediately, and having no confidence in the long term does not equal having none in the short term. You are looking at other people's motives in a narrow way.
Yes I have seen one whale power down and leave the site because he was harassed about how he used his power, and he didn't just self-vote, he supported many people, just not the dolphins that run the show. Actually, he powered up and down multiple times because he changed his mind a few times about the site.
In your last comment you said that whales couldn't just behave how they liked and now you are saying that they can. Of course hypocrisy is short sighted, but what many noobs here on Steemit fail to understand, is that you are being riled up to attack Haejin by the hypocrites who are doing what he is doing, but more subtly, and most of them didn't invest a penny. They just want Haejin gone for reasons of greed because he doesn't vote them up and he reduces what they make.
I am not confusing investing with anything! You buy Steem with fiat, you power-up and that's investing. There isn't just one way to participate in the system- there are as many ways to participate as there are people. If the system adds value to people's lives then more will join and it could be something great, but if the trending page continues to be a high percentage of shit posts that no-one outside of Steemit is interested in then it will stop growing.
Whatever happens, harassing a few investors will make no difference because it helps the dolphins and whales who are running the show rather than the minnows.
Just to clear up what I meant, because we are splitting hairs: what I said is still consistent. The latter case is an obvious statement that people have the freedom to do whatever they so choose. The former was a statement with qualification, that "Whales cannot do what they want without reaction from people that disagree". At least that was the intention, if it wasn't explicit.
Concerning investment vs participation, I'm not disagreeing with you. In fact my point was simply a statement that powering up is the investment, and the participation after is completely optional. A passive investor, for example, will just delegate to projects they like.
I think we see eye to eye on the topics that are of importance.
But actually, there is something that was brought to my attention recently, and I can start to see why you are saying what you are saying. I did not realize that there are people at the top we are not talking about that /are/ doing shady things. I need to investigate further... But my main principle still stands. If you want to target abuse, you target the worst abuser. Now I am trying to figure out whether haejin is actually the worst abuser. And how to cleanly identify something that is clearly bad for Steemit.
For the other points of contention, I don't feel they are worth clarifying, because they really detract from the main point of this conversation. Thanks for your comments.
You too!
I voted up one of your comments because this one was too old.