Dan put something forward that none had before: earning for posting content others value and reward you for (at least, that's the theory that applies to most, but not some like me).

Wasn't this because of a downvote campaign against you from someone with ninja mined stake? I may not be correct on that, but I have seen that as a problem with Steem and Hive that I've aimed to fix with POB. I'm not sure if you've seen the way we did the initial distribution but it was unique in that only one token was issued to me to enable staking. from there the only way tokens enter circulation is through PoB rewards. Obviously, people can sell them, but that will provided opportunities for anyone. I wrote this in a comment recently:

Because each token has entered circulation through Proofs of Brains, token holders have theoretically assigned POB tokens value because they had to use their brains to earn them. Things have started well with more staking and buying than selling. As long as this continues and more people are drawn in by engaging content, new investors will have to be very competitive with each other to even have a chance to keep up with active authors and curators.

To buy influence here would take a sustained effort and pump the price quite a bit during that time which I think will work to deter someone who doesn't give a crap about what we are trying to do on the platform.