Congratulations on your new position.

I likewise disagree with many people's habit of declining payout on many posts that potentially should not be declined for. Steem is in at least one sense like a stock, not just in the Steemit company, but in the community, and what we are creating together. To deny rewards for posts and divorce users that are contributing to it from it? Well that's just stupid. There is a real benefit for employees of Steemit in regards to publicity, which can also be a curse. But that also means that they have real stake in Steem that is constantly growing as they tell everyone about their life and work in addition to any liquid Steem they may acquire at any time.

At the very least they could just donate the rewards to some effort. That's fully built in to the Steem system. Instead they're declining the rewards and just putting it back into the pool, which doesn't always reward the best authors or efforts lately.

If someone is posting on behalf of someone other than themselves, they should possibly donate the rewards, but otherwise, they should just post like everyone else. Hell, we got a ton of services upvoting their own comments on here to reward themselves, and yet the people putting the most into steem are declining rewards all the time and not even really posting regularly? Ehh... It doesn't make sense.