Come on. Currently people are competing in powering up as much STEEM as possible. Both sides will do this indefinitely until consensus is met. Is there a better way to get the people to power up that fast? Do you really think that they will give up their stake? No way.
The most concerning thing is that main blockchain developers left us. There are enough developers available to keep this ship up, but of course, it takes time to study and get comfortable with the existing code.
A community fork would possibly end in a two cent shitcoin on Binance, therefore I don't believe that this is really an option for most stakeholders.
Huge advertising operations can bring in more people than we got in all the years in just a few weeks.
Your problem in this dilemma is that you consider the economy as the relevant matter. In fact, the economy is a relatively minor aspect of society, and, while most people do not find this immediately apparent, when offered $1 for their momma, will quickly grasp that money is utterly without value in comparison to social values.
I could give a shit about tokens. A functional society on a new chain will quickly create a valuable economy as a natural function of society that will render all the struggle and strife over Steem laughable in retrospect.
What matters is a society of folks that are joined together and dedicated to self-governance, which demonstrably depends on their ability to reason together. It is becoming increasingly apparent that whether Justin Sun takes over Steem, as you appear to support, or the prior oligarchy resumes control of Steem, the refusal of that oligarchy to equally weight the stake of all stakeholders in voting on governance, or the ludicrous proposition that Sun will benevolently allow a free society to flourish on the blockchain he reduces to his sole possession, Steem will not be able to effectively support a free and voluntary society able to reason together and govern themselves.
Pander all you want to overlords for the dribble of crumbs they might avail you.
That is irrelevant to free people, and so is anyone that does.
Blockchain devs left Steemit Inc., not Steem.
Also, a fork could likely be quite successful and can run side-by-side to Steem.