"That's what greed is, combined with a lack of understanding how the account creation works on Steem."
The logical extension of your attack on greed here is communism.
BUT, and it's a big but, if you want to hold Witnesses to a higher standard (ie, it's OK to attack them in a populist fashion because...communist reasons) then I guess I could be sold on that. Witness is a very important and lucrative position.
Incidentally, Jerry's the only witness I know of pledging such a large portion of his (potential) block rewards away.
Perhaps we could ask Jerry to re-direct those block rewards to something other than marketing? Hypothetically, do you think that would be helpful and represent progress?
Exposing a scam is not communism. Although that pledge might seem noble, I have doubts about its honesty, in retrospect of his past actions.
It's not a scam. You just don't like the price. A scam would be if he took your money and did not deliver the promised account.
Your position would get stronger if you replaced scam with something like "scheme, plan, ploy" etc.
Further:
"Fraud is generally defined in the law as an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact"
You can't prove intent. He has a plausible (but arguably dumb) explanation for not knowing that jives with the facts. He would walk on fraud charges.
In fact, he wouldn't even be indicted, or have a warrant issued, or arrested. So he wouldn't need to walk out of anywhere.
"Exposing a scam is not communism."
Attacking people for selling a service because someone else does it for free is basically some sort of weird Marxist whataboutism, so yeah, we're in Commie territory there.
"Although that pledge might seem noble, I have doubts about its honesty, in retrospect of his past actions."
This is a fair concern to have. I say we see if it's genuine. It would be like having a community witness, with the rewards going to help everyone indirectly.
Witness votes have no cooldown, after all, we can vote him out very quickly.
Would you feel better if he put some Steem into escrow to make good on this for the first few blocks/days/weeks?
Wait a minute, is he paying you to defend him? You sound like a lawyer 😄
I don't know if any of my replies made it to the block-chain (it says 2 replies, but it loads none?)...
I guess I'll take this as a compliment.
But, I am a lawyer, but Jerry has no affiliation with me beyond the 3 Witness posts and the fact that I met him at his Steemit Meetup.
"defend him"
I don't think it's fair to call a skeptical viewpoint me "lawyering" for Jerry. Nobody has proven he had malicious intent to deceive, and I think anyone who isn't being emotional seems to realize that other explanations are at least worth considering.
Releasing a dumb, overpriced service and ignorance of the alternatives appear to be his only (proven) crime here. Given his witness campaign is based almost entirely on his "marketing" value, this doesn't seem like enough to run him out of town on a donkey yet.
Not only his past actions on steemit but his past actions on other platforms that have seen him expelled.