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All the EOS posts that I have seen have declined payout. They have a huge war chest of ETH worth hundreds of millions, they can afford to decline a few hundred $.

Maybe they could donate the payout to charity such as Red Cross. That would be great. I wouldn't be such a vast amount of money, but hopefully others would follow their example.

Or use it to refund the Meetup fees for organisers.

Yes, that's another good use of the post awards.

If they decline payouts it means that all other posts on steemit get a tiny more payouts. Declining payouts does not go to waste.