The valuation of Steem is tied to it's hopes and dreams.
One of those dreams was "mass adoption," and "pay to play" would end that dream, as the masses do NOT pay for social media. In fact, the masses are quite happy to get their social media for free, thank you very much, and it was only the promise of BEING PAID that would tempt them out of their facebook rabbit holes and their youtube burrows.
If the mass adoption dream dies, that leaves the prospect of a higher Steem valuation teetering on the risky precipice of SMTs. SMTs are promising, but risky, because so far no entity (eg not STINC) has shown any aptitude or skill for marketing the Steem blockchain, leaving the marketing, by and large, to users.
While viral user marketing worked to propel the twin dreams of "mass adoption" and "cutting out the middleman," it will not work for SMTs, as communities considering tokenizing their content will want a party to talk to, before committing to the Steem blockchain for SMTs. They will want assurances of reliable service.
This means that the future of Steem, under pay-to-play will necessarily need to become much MORE centralized, probably under STINC's as-yet-unproven marketing and sales forces, to achieve widespread uptake of SMTs.
This can succeed, but in my view, allowing the death of the easy and free-to-use mass adoption dream risks putting major downward pressure on the Steem price.
For Steem is but dreams, and allowing one of those dreams to die will push Steem into a very dangerous corner.
Fingers crossed. In the meantime, I will be adding @Fulltimegeek to my witness list, as like the @helpie witness, he dreams rainbows, and dreams big. :)
perfectly said Rodney... which is why I know if there is something we are not aiming to ever do is to take away those dreams.
Yeah, like you said, everyone will have forgotten this all happened in a week.
But they really mustn't. Witnesses should be encouraged to have someone on hand who can explain to them all this jibber-jabber code that almost nobody can read and understand. For next time. :)