I'm sorry, I have no much time at this moment to read all of this and tons of comments but I think you are misinterpreting the idea.
"I'm not inclined to believe it is an approach that leads to equality and a healthy distribution of steem on the system."
It has nothing to do with distribution of STEEM. That mining is for sole purpose of account creation, nothing more.
Ability to mine your own account through mining (as I did with mine) is an awesome feature that's currently missing because there's no longer PoW on Steem.
Mining would be back but only to be able to create an account, not to get rewards in STEEM.
Right, but new accounts are worth something. So, those that can mine can make new accounts and those that can't wont' have access. Eventually you're putting 100 Million new account creation tokens in the hands of miners and not in the hands of the general public. That's how steem will get involved. You'll either pay for the new account or you'll pay for the mining. One group will get rich a la Freedom, and the other group will get left in the dust.
Who said those accounts were going to get something?
Mining is not the only way to create an account. You can pay with STEEM or, if you have enough Steem Power, your stake can create an account without losing anything yourself. Adding mining is not about funneling account creation through a single method, but opening it up through multiple methods.
How does that favor non-texhsavy new users? You are stating the obvious that we already know and missing a relevant point here which is, we need to ensure an ease of account creation for users. Steemit must be user friendly, otherwise ... Its weird how the devs are just not getting the general point.
sighs .. I know nothing about mining
that's sad news
but maybe they'd post tutorials?
oh who am I kidding we don't have time to do that either
more sighs and deeper ..
am one of those "no tech- genius" here
Yeah even with the right tutorials I'm not sure I'd make it there. And I've been here a year and dont' entirely suck at these things... i don't know how Mary the Facebook Mom is gonna figure it out.
I agree with @gtg said... nothing more to say... it was very clear with my same comment....