Hey, I just want to clarify some confusion, and say that I totally agree with you.

Newcomers being a cost is fact. They cost money in account creation and delegation, I've seen the numbers.

However, I was referring to these ones:

"Newcomers who invest nothing actually cost the platform substantially, in account creation fees and delegated power."

I wasn't clear, and I should have been. When I said "invest nothing", I also meant the time required to create "quality content". Which, admittedly, most users do not produce. There are many users who have never produced a piece of quality content and that have generated less in total rewards than it cost Stinc/the blockchain to create their accounts.

Those are the ones I mean. The botnets, the sock puppets, the plagiarizers, most of /created (aka /new).

Minnows who create content that garners more rewards (un-botted) than their account cost to create are the bomb, and eventually they turn into dolphins which turn into whales.