RE: Now you can see the numbers.

I appreciate that you've taken time to respond, and with the greatest respect for how raw everyone is feeling, I'm sure that you read everything I said including my personal stance and previous comments and would certainly never purposefully try to imbue my words with a meaning they don't have, attribute personal beliefs I don't have to me... and I'm exponentially sure that your dismissal of "my advantages" is an unfortunate side effect of our focus on the stratification of the haves and have nots (which is why further above I suggest that we do our best to try to leave that out.) After a literal discussion of why I don't think we can so easily separate most people into classes or painted with one brush, I've just been doused with the entire can, and that's a pretty big step backwards in terms of discussion.

Dreamsteem asked me what some people who are in favour of the EIP are thinking and how they could quite possibly have any justification in doing so. I was quite literally asked to write that stuff out. That is why this comment is here: because there was an ask for the other side of things from the views of those who believe them. I've spent as much time talking with them as I have here with all of you, and I wrote it with the clear caveat of saying regardless of my personal thoughts, here are the ones that are most touted and valid. All of the statements are true. They are not false. But just like magic math and magic motivation, none of them can stand on their own. They depend on human behaviour. They depend on the context around them. They depend on other factors in the ecosystem. Which, since I'm sure you've read in my other responses or heard me speaking passionately about, I don't believe will happen, and why I don't believe the EIP will work or that it is a magic bullet that needs a HF focus right now more than Steem needs something like the SPS. However, I understand that it is easy to see the things that hurt and misinterpret, and that because of my wallet or the "green" for my account that it would be easy to view it through that lens.

With all that, I want to address your "moralization" statement, because between that and your suggestion that where I am today is simply a matter of advantages, I haven't felt so particularly like giving up in a long time. Quite clearly: we are talking about the EIP making people's work feel devalued and that people are feeling as though their effort is being taken advantage of. Your comment does exactly that to me while trying to debate that others will feel that way. One size does not fit all.

I understand that there is some sort of mental line where I became "a have" and that it becomes easier to read what I say as "from on high" and through a perceived lens of classes or wallet size answers, but that is as much a disservice to me as it is to those being disserviced by a potential EIP. I also appreciate that you've recognized another awesome Steem blogger, but not the comparison between us, because it is absolutely irrelevant. In one fell swoop there is the suggestion that "she works so hard, but look, there's still no hope for her," and also that "you've got some magical money making advantages and there's only marginal hope for you". I know what you were trying to do, but it largely falls flat.

I didn't drive votes to get 20,000k SP. I bought Steem, with fiat scrimped from a full time job, that I kept powered up (It's a net loss on investment, and I didn't power it up just to try to earn more curation. I delegate much of it and work towards trying to find people not getting rewarded.) I on average, post once a month, because witnessing and community come first. Because I don't post, I can't ever be "red" in the post's math; I have removed the only variable that can produce a negative result. That's not causation, it's correlation, and it's correlation to a stance that people believe I must have just because now "I'm big." Being a witness and a community leader aren't a magical advantage bestowed upon high, by luck. It has been two years of full time work on top of full time work, being available all day every day, paying for servers out of pocket, giving my time freely and without "return" (which is of course untrue, community is my value, forever.) If you removed what I have painstakingly saved into my account over two years of witnessing and buying, I would have as much as, or more likely, LESS than Elsie. And through that all, a truth remains: if I have some Steem, and then I sell some Steem, the result then is I have less Steem. I didn't shame those people. I didn't say they have to change. To try to suggest that pointing out that if every person sells their stake that they also will not have bigger stake is some sort of counterproductive shaming run is projection. I also think unrelated to the EIP it's a bit frustrating that everyone demands votes, but also shouldn't be expected to power anything up. Who is voting? When an author writes, who pays them, then? Why would any single person hold any Steem at all, ever, if all there are are classes that must buy Steem to pay others who will liquidate all of it? These are not questions or thoughts that are moral, but intrinsic to our blockchain's existence. It's okay to allude to them in a discussion, especially when asked to. I did not in any way, shape or form, say "if the authors were just powering up they would be able to get a meaningful piece of the curation pie."

Regardless of the EIP, let me put my face on it, so that we can try to bring the "haves" and the "have nots" a bit closer. I recognize that now, my face matters less, because of my "class". I only use the terms income and salary, because as long as I witness, they are valid. I am required to run a working server with the proper software, and there is a set amount for recompense if I do. If I do not, or am "fired" by being unvoted, that goes down or stops. Part of that job is being accountable to voters. Despite being exactly the same as other authors in every way, in the last week alone, I've been lectured on chain that as a witness and a community leader that I should never sell Steem or power down, because my responsibility is to the ecosystem around me to power it up to help Steem price and other authors. I received an angry DM from someone who was mad that I wouldn't follow their curation trail because it is my job as someone with big stake to share that with authors. I got another asking me to stop being selfish by holding liquid Steem and instead to power it up and to delegate it to smaller people's projects (which I do, but not this particular one). Somehow, I hit an amount where I went from being "one of you" to "one of them". Somehow, despite everyone saying "hands off my wallet," I hit a mark where mine became community property. Even though I don't get to be an author any more, and the income I am making from an actual set of requirements is not vote or content dependent like an author, no one will come around and defend me for "making the sensible economic decision not to power up [my] earnings when powering up gets [me] essentially nothing."

A lot of this response isn't about the EIP at all, but instead about the way we talk with each other about things like the EIP, and about exactly why I keep saying we have to treat each other as individuals instead of trying one size fits all answers. It's too easy to assume what people are saying and thinking and feeling versus what they are - and I mean that largely in a bottom up sense, but not entirely. It really is a really shitty 1% that will fuck up our economics regardless of the number spread. In any case, this has become long enough and I realize it doesn't any of the points you've made as much as I feel you didn't pick out the points that actually mattered to me. Thanks for the dialogue.