RE: My response to Justin
Wrong. Ned had his own [substantial] personal stake held in his own personal account(s). So did Dan. But the STEEM held in Steemit accounts was something else entirely. It was meant to develop the ecosystem, and much of the community participated with that in mind. Many people bought stake, powered up, and invested their time with that understanding. I personally powered up more STEEM after this understanding was reaffirmed by Ned late last year. Otherwise I was prepared to dump. The Steemit stake is CLEARLY encumbered with an obligation to the community.
Having said that, I believe there is room for a compromise that would ensure Steem has the decentralization and development funding it needs going forward, while still enabling Justin to make a huge return on investment.
Not wrong .... Its Ned's business where he holds his personal stake. Many others here have their stake in multiple accounts as well. There's only one type of stake in this situation ....... that's Ned's (now Justin Sun's) personal stake.
As I said in my opening statement. I think there's a large group of people being unreasonable due to the false narative that the Steemit INC. stake isn't privately owned. If you have a legal document stating otherwise I'll gladly reconsider my position on the issue.
Justin Sun shouldn't be stronged armed to spend his stake on the development of the chain. It should be his choice to do so or not just like its your choice to spend yours on the chain or not.
Are the ones asking him to hand over his funds willing to do the same with their own funds? If not they shouldn't be demanding someone else does.
The Steemit Stake is encumbered by social contract. Maybe you don't know the history. Briefly:
From an early stage, the community was understandably concerned about Steemit's large, ninja-mined stake and many were reluctant to invest their resources in the platform. In order to mitigate concerns and attract maximum participation by new and existing users/stakeholders, Ned assured the community that the Steemit stake would be used only for development purposes and would be diluted over time for greater decentralization. He repeated this many times in many public venues, and it came to be considered a social contract between Steemit and the community.
Many (if not the the vast majority) of Steem ecosystem participants factored this social contract into their decisions about whether to buy and power up STEEM (and how much), whether to invest their valuable time blogging/commenting/curating, whether to run witnesses, develop dApps, etc. Many would not have engaged in these activities without the social contract. It is clear that the stake Justin Sun now controls as a result of purchasing Steemit Inc is encumbered by this social contract.
The bottom line is that Ned has put both Justin Sun and the community in a very difficult position. Unless, of course, Justin knew these details. Either way, the only way out will be some kind of compromise. That's what civilized people do when their strongly-held positions are at odds. What do you propose instead, a fight to the death?
This gave me a chuckle. I touched on my opinion on everything else you wrote already in my various comments so I will just address your line above.
I purpose a rework of how witnesses are voted in. I always said 30 votes was too much ..... With less votes per account Justin Sun or anyone with a significant amount of power wouldn't be able to over take the top witness spots. With less votes, Steemians will have to be more picky about who they think deserves a witness vote. The witnesses would also have to work harder to attain a vote due to votes being less plentiful, which in turn will help better the chain.
Edit: Here's a decent system that's allot better then the current...
https://steemit.com/steem/@holoz0r/changing-the-witness-voting-system-by-introducing-witness-downvotes-could-this-work