I am good on RC, it's taken care of because I knew people. And I'm quite certain I'll end up paying it forward to someone or someones as well, just as I used to do the same with delegations when I maintained a funded account, was a top witness etc etc in the past.

It's not a matter of me not understanding how it works, it's a matter of completely thwarting new registrants from their first day. You can't say "post and earn!" as your mantra and then the reality be "you can sorta look around, but it will cost you to do much else and eventually you might earn, but only if you manage to last that long" first.

Yes its "been around since steemit" but only the very last days of steemit. I believe I was still running a node when it happened, even. And I didn't like it then either. When you joined steemit in the old days, you paid to sign up, it was like 6 steem or something, but it cost you, and it was advertised as such. Some communities sponsored free reg methods and covered it, ("something like SPL onboards people and provides the RC") while still other people paid to come in and play. And you were weak when you came in that way, but you weren't impotent completely.

As for SPL providing the RC etc bit, yes, thus eliminating the very same RC problem for their players that we are discussing right here itself. They have to do that, because otherwise nobody would or rather could play at all. Your solution there solves the problem Im presenting perfectly. It removes the problem that would otherwise stop the growth of their game. See how that works? Remove the problem or lose the players. Now do the whole ecosystem....

RC isn't money. The idea was never about "handouts" since it's not money at all, and that's a mistaken take from my point of view. But it takes some money to have some so its conflicting in itself. RC was always about restricting accounts from posting bulk spam to farm rewards, and honestly, at this point, there are other mechanisms preventing that from being a way to do much anyway, especially without at least one funded account to drive the upvote farm in the first place.

So it's a bit like locking a 2 foot tall fence. It's not really protecting anyone from much of anything but its keeping the "honest people" locked out to some degree at the time when they should be most enthusiastically diving in headlong and learning to love the place.