Great post. Have been reading a lot about the power-down shortening arguments and they all seem quite focused on short term profits and the mania that's being induced by the current bull market. Some people seem to think that reducing the power-down period will increase price which will increase the number of people that will join the Hive community, but how many of those people would just leave as soon as the price dipped?
Staking provides an incentive for the community to stick around regardless of price action, and makes whales and high level curators put their money where their mouth is to gain influence on the network. Having people be able to power-up, mega upvote or downvote random content and then power-down at will seems like it would really harm proper engagement with the platform itself.