This is the most articulate, honest and objective summary I've yet read about the issues at hand. (The Minority Report analogy ... nice.)

• Thank you very much, kind sir!! :)

the ultimate in censorship for it represents not just restraint on speech, but restraint on thought ... the essence of Orwell's dystopian warning in "1984."

• Unfortunately, most, if not all of the spectators in this debacle will completely miss the irony of this. Steemit was meant to be the last bastion of free speech and non-censorship, yet this is what we've become.

I doubt that anything he did was illegal. The STEEM held at exchanges are effectively "in trust" and the exchanges are "trustees." But "trusts" are not "persons or things" like "people or corporations" ... they're "relationships."

• I'm not sure on that one, it definitely feels illegal, however I bow to your greater knowledge of all things financial. However the exchanges have shot themselves in the foot on this one, because like you say it is a relationship built on trust, and they've just eroded a hell of a lot of that very same trust.

For years, some of the largest bidbots on the blockchain were owned and operated by Top 20 Witnesses. Naked vote-buying and -selling, which is the dictionary definition of corruption in any voting-based system. And I recall a huge Whale trying to organize a bidbot for auctioning Witness Votes to the highest bidder. "If you want to be a Top 20 Witness, you ought to be willing to compensate Whales for their support." He even used the world "kickback."

• Yup! Ned allowed his barons their lands, and allowed them to collect their taxes without interference, just as Machiavelli advises a Prince to do.

Once Ned gave up his kingdom, naturally the barons and the oligarchs grew restless, fearing a new order, they acted to fill a perceived power vacuum.

And yet to listen to the moral outrage of the (former) Top 20 Witnesses you'd think that they were Cardinals in Conclave agonizing about who should be God's Victor on Earth. You can't be pirates on day and claim to be the navy the next.

• Unfortunately for them, they were tricked into not having a Cardinal ready to be made Pope, hence they were left in a position whereby they found they could not back one of their choosing, so they instantly opposed.

"God, I could kill that f---ing Quill for his damned verbosity?"

• Your verbosity, along with your sometimes acerbic wit, go together to make up important parts of your character. Without which, you simply wouldn't be Quill! 😁

Cg