Thanks for the excellent article! It definitely helped clarify a few questions I've had about how things work here.
Without the ability to immediately dump ones steem power, the "whales" have every incentive to actually help the platform rather than using it to pump and dump assets as is seen so commonly all over the place.
This is the primary reason that I think steemit has serious potential in the long run. Everyone who uses the platform has motivation to see it do well and it becomes hard for anyone (or small wealthy group) to artificially manipulate the price and then pull out immediately for huge profit at everyone elses expense.
That's right, it's a great alternative to the usual scenario where you have to have a lot of trust for a lot of strangers, who can display self interest and ruin the whole system, at the stroke of a key.
Cg