Let's think about paper money. You had to have people guarding that paper money.

Let's think back to gold. You at least had to hire people to guard that gold.

Let's think about grain or rice. You had to have people guard that grain or rice. You at least had to have some cats around.

Now we have witnesses and they pay themselves pretty well on the whole for the service they provide of keeping track of all of this. No one binds them to dole out what they make, and no one is really strong enough to stop any large SP holder from voting on whatever they like, with a few exceptions of some infighting amongst some whales.

I guess I'm saying that there's not really much friction at all in the form of losses due to waste, spoilage, theft, etc. (okay, hackers still exist I guess), taxes, and so on that could possibly automatically penalize just sitting on SP and producing huge amounts of SBD sent right back towards you and your friends. The lifeblood of an economy is really driven by how much of that friction lands back in the hands of people who actually need it to survive, but these new digital currencies, especially ones like this, are pretty darn frictionless save for server and energy costs.

And yes, there is not really much incentive at all to spread the wealth around if the price of the currency is not dependent on how things go here, so much as how tasty a pump opportunity the charts look any given day on a single exchange.

But I suppose that dynamic will not last forever, and if SP holders and witnesses are not willing to make this place more appealing to the masses then yes, market forces and real price discovery in a post-Tether/Upbit world will rapidly show us how much people on the outside really value our little social experiment.

Also, sorry I can't vote this post for more, I'm trying to save some voting power for my own nascent social experiement/UBI project, but I always appreciate your write-ups, freeborn.