I can't tell you how that would work or what should change.

Same. I have some insights, as I'm sure you also do. I don't begrudge anyone any stake, but I do begrudge predation on me and society that deprecates that real wealth that our good fellows are. How to rein in such power that abused has blasted away ~1m users that organically came here and surmounted the onboarding process and learning curve to start providing content is going to take someone smarter than me to devise.

Curtailing the power of stake to do so is necessary. How to curtail that power isn't clear. What is clear is that HW isn't the way to do it, and it isn't necessary to read more than once the humiliation ritual they put people through to get off their blacklist to know this beyond doubt. It also is clear that some mechanism needs to exist to cause people not to prey on society here. The oligarchy has found a middle ground of 3k-5k organic users that enable enough content to be published to maintain it, that enables them to continue to attain to ROI from their stake. More users threatens their control of governance by distributing Hive stake, and fewer threatens to render the platform without sufficient economic activity to avail them nominal ROI to bother with it.

Valueplan is pretty obviously enabling kickbacks that increase the ROI of the oligarchy, because they're not screeching about lack of accountability despite eyewitness testimony to theft by fraud, wasting the funding on proposals that produce no benefits to the platform whatsoever, onboard no new users, recruit no new investors, gain no new listings, nothing. If I had $1M that someone was bleeding away I'd sure screech about it. Since none of them are screeching, they are getting that blood and feasting on it. That is obvious.

Hive won't exist in 10 years at this rate of bleed. I may not live that long anyway. Not sure anything I do or say will have any ability to change any of that, so I take such opportunity as I have to sound my barbaric yawp across the rooftops of the world while I lean and loaf and take my ease, nibbling on 'Blades of Grass' as I do. From time to time fellow sojourners with meaningful yawps of their own give voice, so I thank you for it.