"This Whale Cabal thing has come up quite a bit. I do not know what that theory is based on..."

~36 whales have maintained a bare majority of stake since Steem advented in 2016 (excluding the Founder's stake, that did not vote witnesses until Sun bought it) and governed the platform by choosing the witnesses. It seems unlikely that folks with substantial stake would just ignore their common interests, and the coordination of their actions is difficult to deny has produced mutually beneficial results. I am amazed at the maintenance of their majority in such a tight range, >50% and <51% of staked hive.

The takeover of Steem was a vivid example of the dilemma they face. Their control of governance of the platform derives from their majority of stake. It's a plutocracy, pure and simple. Because it's a plutocracy the only thing that is required to take over is more money, which is what happened to Steem. Hive is just as vulnerable as Steem. There are no mitigating metrics whatsoever.

The only thing that protects the whales from being replaced on Hive as they were on Steem is that investors aren't interested in unproductive investments, so they make the platform unproductive. Were this community to grow rapidly and the token price to rise quickly attention would be attracted from pockets deep enough to take control of the platform.

In early 2017 this was happening. Thousands of influential creators came and started bringing their audiences with them. This was a disastrous threat to the governing whales. Mass downvoting drove the new users off the platform, but even that didn't save Steem, and Sun took it over. So, downvoting folks until they leave has been continued, and today less than 1% of users that come here stay here. We have hit a sweet spot of ~5k users that is able to provide the maximum ROI for the whales, but doesn't threaten to attract outside investment that could replace them as plutocrats.

This can't continue forever, and the DHF is being mined as rapidly as possible. Too rapidly, causing the token price to crash, and threatening the whole platform. We'll see if BT reins it in, or if he just continues to bleed the DHF as fast as he can.

This is my understanding of the Cabal.

"I have had a lot of people steal from me on HIVE."

I exposed my keys once and lost 400 liquid Hive I had on hand, but Someguy helped me to recover my account and end the problem. I doubt that's what you're referring to. Taxation is theft - but you don't agree DV's are taxation, so you're not talking about DV's. I dunno how else people could steal on Hive.

"If I gave money to every poor person I know I would be in debt in less than 24 hours."

You, like everyone else, have a duty to be prudent and manage your stake well. I'm sure a lot of people come with their hands out, and that it gets old. Because I have experienced thefts of my property IRL I have sought to manage goodwill instead of money, because goodwill can't be stolen, taxed, inflated away, or rot. So far I have succeeded beyond my expectations. It's less simple than I'd hoped, but it's been a very beneficial process. There's only one way for me to get goodwill and that's by doing good things for good people, and that has had a very good affect on me.