Everyone is welcome to vote me in as a witness. If the unlikely event happens that I end up in the top twenty, I will buy the hardware with my credit card and support the community. To do so without being in the top twenty would be economically fool-hardy or as my wife would say "stupid."
I was running steemfiles.com which used to give people the ability to buy files with Steem Dollars a couple of years ago. It didn't work out economically but I was running this out of my own pocket without being a witness. If given witness I will maintain a node in the South of Argentina, instead of San Francisco. That's decentralized.
Running a Steem node is an expensive enterprise. If you want to throw $400+ on a server per month hosted or run your own which should be about $2000 up-front cost and then something like $50/month on Internet, you are welcome to but it's probably a waste of time and money.
Agreed