Well, and that's the big problem. The biggest positives in the communities I'm in is that personal engagement: People reading, responding, and voting on things in comment sections they like. That's the way in which steem most resembles social media. This change is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I'm told there are tremendous abuses of the rewards pool going on. Undoubtedly this is true. But this change has too large of an impact on the best of steem's ecosystem. This change must be struck down. I'm doing everything I can to get the witness votes needed for a different top 20, but it certainly feels like there's a wall of rich people making the decisions for us. I've invested what I can afford into steem. They happen to be richer. That doesn't make it right. They're pulling the rug out from underneath all the target demographic. You want to attract the masses? Make Steem attractive for the masses. Not for the Steem whales. Their incentive to behave well should be that they want the value of steem to go up, because they already have a lot. Changing the system so that they can acquire more steem is not going to make them behave better. They'll just have more power to come out on top while the rest of steem sinks.
Trickle down economics doesn't work. It's been demonstrated time and again that it only leads to greater wealth disparity and an overall lower standard of living. This is that.