As far as I'm aware, nothing that you've presented is legally binding (wouldn't hold up as a legal contract in court). So, you're essentially admitting that you were putting your trust in Ned that he'd hold true to his words, am I right?

And that justifies sucking all the power away from the new owner of those Steem that he was holding when he made that "social contract", correct?

The way I see it, there's all kinds of risk coming into play with this choice to soft-fork away Steemit's influence on the chain, the biggest of which may not even be the potential legal issues. Steem may never be able to recover from the negative perception of what can easily be perceived as randomly deciding to delete the largest holder's stake. Who would want to invest into that?