Nice rant!

I still hold that a bunch of these people are misguided and have missed the whole point of "investing."

People don't buy Intel, or MicroSnot or Apple stock to get a daily payout. They buy that stock in the expectation of a capital gain. You buy a stock today at $5 and sell it in three years for $100, if all goes well. Most new industry stocks don't even PAY current dividends, and certainly never enough that you can hope to make a living from it.

What's my point? Treating the income part of Steem/Steemit as the primary gain is lunacy. Your stake is ultimately where your primary gain should come from. Unfortunately we went down this weird rabbit hole where everyone is obsessively focused on tomorrow's rewards. WTF, over?

And it may be that the price of Steem will have to decline all the way to the point where "current income" becomes meaningless, and people (individual contributors) instead gradually become the major stake holders, not "investors" or "app developers."

I think Ned & Co. sort of missed part of the point... it doesn't matter HOW many great apps you have if there's nobody using them at the "retail" (end user) level.

=^..^=