"Who is buying Steem that the promotion of capital gains might discourage?

Markets predate writing. Capital gains has proved to encourage investment and positive social development. That principle is sound, understandable, and proved since prehistory. I do not fear it won't work.

As to my sense of ethics, markets do not have ethics. It is not my sense of ethics that caused HRC to buy the nomination from the DNC, nor the lack of it that caused the ethical members of the market to vote against her. The market appears ethical because the individuals that comprise it are ethical, and the market for Steem reveals that my ethics appear to be the same as those in the market, because demand for Steem is not increased by financial corruption manipulating rewards comprises.

I don't want Steem to fail in the marketplace because it has some great features the market is yearning for, that the market values very highly. That it is failing in the marketplace despite these great features shows that it is being broken by very bad practices, equivalent to buying votes in a market that utterly reviles such corruption, and that is what I want to see change."

People bought into DPos, and that’s what they got. Meaning, the more tokens you have, the more influence you have over the network. That extra influence, regardless if it’s used to reward self or others, is a major selling point. If you take that and turn it on its head with a communized voting strength, then anyone who bought into the system because of the DPos gets short-changed. This is even more impactful if you do it when steem prices are low, and that’s because steem holders may never get a chance to break even in the market. This is especially true if people don’t see an incentive for buying into your particular flavor of utopia.

Demand for steem has not increased because many people realize that Steem's success is determined by Bitcoin's success. Nobody is certain if the dead cat will bounce again, and if so, how high. I don't want Steem to fail unless it deserves too. The market will sort that out for us. One right or wrong hard fork can make or break the desire for people to buy Steem. Whenever people are buying as opposed to selling, it's propping up the value of the token. Kill the incentive to buy, and you end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It all seems like a simple cause and effect to me. I wish the experiment could have taken place outside the influence of Bitcoin. Then people could have a better gauge of how hard forks influence the buying and selling of stake.