Let's approach the question from another angle so that perhaps you can understand my perspective.
Let's leave aside the issue of what percentage of the reward pool someone gets. That gets into Tragedy of the Commons territory and I don't want to go there. Since you didn't bring it up yourself, we'll leave it aside.
Here's the deal – what difference to you is it if he manages to make $9 million USD a year? Leaving aside the rewards pool, like we said, why is it your business to decide how much someone else can take voluntarily from people who willingly offer material support?
I want you to think carefully about your answer and realize that you will be going into a dangerous space in so doing.
I have long said that "you should never build a weapon that you aren't willing to have used against yourself." That applies equally to weaponized arguments.
"I don't think he deserves that much," opens you to the counterargument that someone else might decide that you don't deserve any of what you're getting – and by your reasoning, they would be justified in making sure you didn't get it.
You have to avoid that argument. If that is your argument, if that is the feeling that you have in your heart of hearts, you are going to get screwed, blued, and tattooed in the long run. You have given "your enemies" (for lack of a better collective term) a stick to beat you with.
Now, you might have a reasonable argument if it was, "I don't believe he deserves the portion of the reward pool that he is entitled to by the number of upvotes that he's received." That's still a very dangerous weaponized argument to make, but it's one you could, in theory, justify with some effort. Again, it's a weapon that can be turned around and used against you and people with whom you agree with trivial effort. Effectively it boils down to, "I don't believe that the positive support of the people who like that content are as important as myself and the people who agree with me."
You can obviously see where that could be a problem in the long term, right?
Now, you might take the position that, by your measure, "he simply doesn't provide enough good to the community to have access to that much influence" – but this might be the most dangerous weaponized argument for yourself and those you support that could be put forward. It's terrible. It allows anyone with a subjective opinion about "what you accomplish" and more power than you to come along and shut you up, as long as the whim takes them for.
I'm having difficulty justifying your position in a rational manner, and I'd really like you to help me out.
It’s just price discovery. Show me any blogger in history of planet earth who earns $9 million USD yearly and we can have a rational discussion about it.
There are some professional journalists who make over $10 million US a year and blog – so that's not really a good differentiator. While I'm not particularly interested in his content and I think it's pretty low friction and mindless, I don't think it's my place to tell the people who want to support him how much they should want to support them or that they are desire to support him is somehow less important than my distaste for what he does.
If it were just price discovery, then you would be perfectly fine with a single big whale deciding to come out of torpor, see a thing that he likes, and decide that the price is simply too low and start rewarding it. That is, after all, what he acquired all of that SP for.
If we are to assume that Bernie has the right to do with his SP whatever he pleases, vast as that reservoir is, if we don't accept that others have the same choice and ability to choose, that makes us the hypocrites.
Is that the position you're comfortable with? Because I am definitely not comfortable with that position.
Ultimately, this is coming down to one guy with a lot of money telling me that some other guy with a lot of money shouldn't get to do what he wants to do with his pile of cash for "moral reasons", while materially gaining at a level that I, personally, will never, ever see from the suppression of the second guy.
And somehow we get caught up in the middle of all that.
The reason we get caught up in the middle of all that is that it makes starkly clear that it doesn't matter what kind of content you create or how many people are in support of you making it – all it takes is one person more powerful than you to doesn't like it and you're gone.
For a lot of people who talk a big line about freedom of speech, freedom of commerce, freedom from censorship and oppression – that should really bother them.
So we are back to my original question, how do we justify your position in a rational manner that doesn't weaponized the argument to be used against you and people that you agree with? Is it even possible? Is it inherently self-destructive to hold your position?
I don't see the contradiction. I have always maintained that they can do whatever they want with their stake. When we find equilibrium, we will know the correct price. I don't get your objection.
Who? Let's compare/contrast if we're getting what we're paying for here. I maintain it's big fat no.