I think you are making a lot of false assumptions about a lot of things. That is my opinion and we may have to agree to disagree

It is certainly possible. But if you can convince me of it, I will be happy to learn I have been wrong and change my mind to become right. It is only in discussions with people we do not perfectly agree with that we can benefit from their better understanding in that way. If you do think I am wrong, I beseech you to not leave me in that untenable condition, but to avail me of reason that I might join you in becoming right, so that I do not err, perhaps even to do people harm against my will, in my mistaken understanding.

I have undertaken to not make any untoward assumptions about your motivations, and indeed have come to your considerable defense in discussions with KillerG. But I have undertaken to discuss with Blurt users at length, just as I am with you, and you will note I am not on Blurt, nor do I advertise Blurt. I bear none ill will, and just like you, feel all free speech platforms can work together to make all of them stronger in a better world. That is not a commonly expressed sentiment of Blurt users, many of whom continue to bear ill will towards Hive and whomever did them the harm they feel they have been done. They ubiquitously IME consider DV's theft, and Khrom has posted on Hive incontrovertible mathematical proof that DV's inevitably centralize stake. Despite the fire in his belly on that issue, and in conversation with me, his post is not lacking in good comity, and because of that I did reblog it here.

"Downvoting should be used to allocate the reward pool better, but downvoting at all is a freakshow right now."

[edit: I think for the reasons I have pointed out, and you have seen demonstrated, downvoting is likely to always be a shitshow, because people understand taxation is theft, and hate it.]

As I have pointed out downvoting does indeed reallocate the rewards pool, and always towards fatter wallets. Now, when DV's don't have as their purpose reallocation, but rather prevention of circle jerks, bot abuse, abusive self voting, and plagiarism I absolutely agree - and always have - that preventing mischievous and rapine avarice with DV's is entirely appropriate. I hope I have not once in our conversations expressed that I consider whales that do not do those things bad, evil, or greedy. Nor have I sought to malign anyone for being prudent and well managing their stake. I agree above that Dan did not consider DV's as bad or theft, but when the use of DV's to drive literal hordes of new users off the platform began, he quickly gave up on the platform and went onto build others. I didn't have opportunity to discuss those events with him, or his reasons for doing that. But it is likely that he saw that DV's were having impacts he had not foreseen and because governance was in place and benefiting from those unforeseen effects, and he was oath bound to not undertake governance with his ninjamined stake (the Founder's stake he and Ned promised the OG miners was solely to be used for development), he shied away from humbly recognizing he had made errors and facing the music to rectify them. Ned eventually did worse, by selling the Founder's stake to Sun and moving on.

I don't think that makes either of them evil, nor do I ascribe malicious intentions to them - although they certainly are just as human as you and I, and fall short of our aspirations to be blameless - nor do I think whales doing what they think is wisest and best for their personal stake they alone have responsibility for managing well are evil (unless they do practice deception and maliciously profit from harming others by abusing their stake, or worse commit criminal fraud, as has been alleged by credible witnesses). All my interactions with Valueplan principals are on chain, and despite the extraordinary defensiveness of one of them who continually accused me of making false allegations, I very carefully avoided doing so and did my very best to phrase my confrontations with them just as I have here, of credible allegations from claimed eyewitnesses. It is that desperate defensiveness I found most convincing of fraud, and am not surprised to have recently seen again accusations of fraud surfacing from their ongoing operations managing DHF funds. But that is not proof, and to my best recollection I did not then, nor have since, stated there was any proof, or that they or anyone was guilty of fraud. The witnesses alone can do that based on their direct knowledge. The VP principals flatly refusing to provide proof they did not commit or enable others to commit fraud by providing receipts is only evidence, not proof.

But it is very convincing evidence Valueplan principals are deliberately enabling theft by fraud, and proof that Hive is failing in it's fiduciary duty to ensure no theft of DHF funds is occurring by failing to demand GAAP from DHF grant recipients.

Anyway, this comment begins only to reveal my incapacity to demonstrate that brevity is the soul of wit, and I hope I have successfully lobbied for you to show me that I am wrong, and not do me the injury of leaving in that condition.