I don't judge people for how they want to make money or what they consider is worth their time. People who are here just for the money are probably going to leave when they find greener pastures.
The money means almost nothing to me. I've put more into Hive than gotten back. I'm just here to record the life of a couple of cats, our hobbies and to have fun. The content here is real, I avoid the content that is just made to make money. A couple weeks work is worth far more than 1000 hours of time spent posting, browsing and curating on Hive. There are far better ways to make money.
I left hive for a year or so because there was nothing positive to say or do under lockdown. It was more important to focus on other areas of development. The control you have over the content you see and create is far more important than a few bucks. At times we don't want to see anything.
There are many accounts who just take from Hive, they write excellent posts, sometimes they even write meaningful comments but they are leeches, taking off thousands and keeping HP worth a fraction of what they have got out of the ecosystem. This is even worse than the complainers who leave. Of course these accounts are silent because they don't want to direct attention to themselves since their power is so low.
It's the reputation system that needs an overhaul. If you power down or go a while without posting or curating, you should lose some reputation. How accounts who haven't posted in years, who never curate or who power down 99% of the Hive they get, have high reputations is beyond me. If someone writes something negative, hit that downvote button, it's a great way to exhibit your disapproval. It's not smart to spam Acid's wall with negativity.
Yeah usually when I say reputation I mean the reputation behind you as a username/person, not the number that goes up based on how many upvotes you receive compared to downvotes. I believe @blocktrades is working on a better reputation system not for hive but something broader that could be implemented on hive.