The part where I suspected many of the bid bot owner witnesses resisting the EIP is speculative as I have no access to the witness channel

That didn't stop you from making accusations though.

I am not referring to the point in time after the proposal got Inc support recently as I suspect most would capitulate by then anyway, and that was the only point after which I saw support from him

I'm not either.

10ish months early when I raised the EIP as a package, I only remember butting heads with you and timcliff over the numbers (regrettably in hindsight, as you guys were one of the very few at that time open to actual economic reform). The only top 20 who supported it then was cervantes.

Now funny you should mention @cervantes and 10-ish months ago because sure enough, 10-ish months ago they published a poll the witnesses, nearly all of whom, including @therealwolf were in favor of nearly all of the EIP reform ideas in one form or another (lots of green on that chart, eh?)! And to be clear this was not the first time these most of these ideas were proposed discussed, nor supported by most of the witnesses.

https://steemit.com/witness-category/@cervantes/witness-consensus-status-to-fix-the-actual-steem-s-economic-flows-eng

Sure there are many practical reasons

No, there is really only one reason and that is extreme reluctance bordering on refusal of Steemit Inc to address it on their own or take any meaningful input (on this or anything else) from the community and/or witnesses. (Thankfully, I might add, this has improved to a great degree, the long-delayed and long-overdue progress on EIP being one example but not the only one.)

Which by the way I have personally discussed with you before so I know you were aware of it.

but it feels rational to suspect that impediment from the group with the most to lose from a broadly fair economy made moves against it over all this time may have been one of them

Maybe you're projecting on how you would act, or simply wrong, I don't know. But that just isn't the reality.

You have no idea how tedious and precarious it was to try to get these changes through knowing full well that a group of bid bot owners in the top 20 had sufficient numbers to veto the motion

And yet all available evidence suggests, or even more than suggests, just the opposite. Maybe you just weren't paying attention, weren't engaging with what was actually going on, and created a narrative in your head that did not exist.

Again, let's not attack each other on the basis of imaginary events which did not occur.