Thanks for your sincere response. I am glad that you took the time to provide a thoughtful response and I am happy to give you something more to think about! I'm going to hopefully provide a little more color to my thoughts and the excerpts I selected.

I agree, as I was pulling some excerpts from the WhitePaper, I saw many items that were clearly outdated (especially since HF 0.19.0). That doesn't mean that the underlying message should be thrown to the side simply because the Witnesses have decided to take action and "step away" from portions of the original purpose of Steemit.

Some of the changes to Steemit will be very valuable, and others will be detrimental. Since HF 19, I have seen a significant shift in the atmosphere on Steemit and the "capitalist" mentality has shot through the roof.

Improvements to the user experience of the platform through SmartPhone Apps, Trading Apps to more easily convert Steem to BTC or eventually fiat, and other improvements that are completely unrelated to simply "Earning Steem" should absolutely be able to earn Steem from their ORIGINAL Content that they are bringing to the Platform.

I find exception when accounts are creating the SAME SCHEMES, such as the Pay-For-Upvotes bots, where the explicit goal is to Game the Earnings System. At this point these accounts are bypassing the 7 day waiting period and eroding some of the basic ideals of the Steemit Platform. While we don't have to wait a full year to Power Down 100% anymore (since it's been dropped to 13 weeks), there is still no other method offered by the Steemit Platform where an individual can immediately obtain value for an action on the platform, EXCEPT for the Pay-For-Upvotes Accounts that are receiving Liquid Steem / SBD

Even when Converting my SBD to STEEM, I have to wait 3.5 Days! (Unless I take the Conversion Hit in the Market)

While the idea of paying for upvotes is very clever, it is a blatent abuse of the Steemit Platform. These bots can game the system with small effect because their upvotes are free, and the SBD they get has more value to them after converting it instantly than by waiting the 3.5 days, or earning it legitimately by producing original content or actively being involved in the community (a bot is not "actively involved").