Thanks for finding and posting this, but the quote that you highlighted and focused on is probably the shallowest and least interesting part of his response. I thought the other things he said afterwards were more thoughtful and engaging. And I don't agree with you at all about the money, which does not need to be a bad thing if we find the right balance.
And don't forget that we have a "decline payment" option on the posts now if you want to try out a money-free alternative.
I don't oppose making money, I'm just saying that focusing primarily on that is not a good way of doing marketing.
As we are seeing right now, activity has been declining. My guess is that biggest reason is small rewards. When people are after money, they will abandon the platform if they don't get the money.
Focus should be on user experience. Steemit should be so great to use that people will like it even when they don't make any money. So that when the rewards are low, people wouldn't become less active. Instead they would keep on telling about Steemit to all their friends. If the user experience is great, we would be getting more new users in times like these when it's hard to earn big sums of money.
And when we have truly great user experience and the price will start to go up again, we'll have huge advantages over other platforms.
We're working hard on both of those.