Selling endorsements (upvotes) is a primary use-case for steem. Advertising is the primary source of funding for facebook, youtube, and google.
Except Steem is the only place where advertising fees include ROI. You see why it's being exploited badly before HF21? This is the only place on Earth where you can drop some money, bots promise you 20% return on STEEM within 7 days.
Hence why no good content creators really wanted to use them because all the shitposts being churned out at a rapid rate.
What moral theory are you defending??
What are we defending? The dude was top #1 "author" selling. Add 30 more whales to that list. What do you have? A token with not enough demand. Too many people don't want to be here because all they see is whales wanking themselves. They are selling faster than people can generate value.
That whale didn't build value. He didn't sponsor projects. He didn't delegate to shit. He was here to do "proof of click" mining to cash out the value YOU build from your sorry content.
In fact, I am willing to bet that he wanted to keep things that way so he can have his perpetual money printing machine for his own projects away from Steem while you marvel him as lord of the blockchain.
Steem needs real investors, not profiteers. The current ecosystem can't sustain pure profiteers such as selfish whales or content agnostic "promotional services". Ask @valued-customer all about it.
There are other whales sponsoring communities and projects, those are the investors you need. Not some guy trying to cash out quicker than others are building.
I was about to substantively quote your comment and point out how much I agree, and then I saw the ping LOL. Apparently I am not alone in grasping how demand is created by markets.
I.. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Yes I believe in a hundred% of what you are saying