First I want to say that I upvoted this because I agree with the base thesis: Complaining about downvotes makes no sense if you're not also complaining about upvotes. They are part of the same system.

However, there are a lot of details that I feel you get wrong (or, at least, I disagree with them).

For one, you say that you don't depend on Steemit for income, yet you are powering down - essentially giving up potential returns in the future - in order to help your sick mother.

While I believe this is admirable, I also believe the statements are contradictory. If you really didn't need Steemit at all, you wouldn't need to power down to help your mother.

I think that everyone has some level of dependency on Steemit. What you mean is, your level of dependence isn't very high. And that's fine, great even.

But I think there's a small insinuation that a person might be a bit of a loser if they do depend on their income from Steemit. I disagree with this. If it makes money, it's fair game as a means of survival.

However, this is also why I agree with your base thesis: what people don't like about Steemit is that it is perfectly fair. You put in more of a stake (either through the sweat equity of writing posts and doing projects or through a direct financial investment) and you get more say in how the platform works.

I like that you invite people to talk at the end. You can be a bit of a character so I was unsure about you, but I think the lucidity and equanimity of this post has earned my follow (I'm sure you care).

I also disagree about blog posts being valuable. Value is what we say it is, the more people that percieve that value and engage with it, the more value is inherently brought to the platform. Steemit might be able to survive any specific blogger leaving, but it certainly could not survive all of us (or even the top 20,000) taking off at once.

I've seen things developing and certainly understand both sides, but people threatening to quit the platform really turns me off, especially when they're fortunate enough to have been making that much a post regularly.

If they can downvote you and you don't like it, become resolve to become more powerful.

As you say, people can do exactly what they like with their power on this platform, and it behooves all of us to attempt to act in the platforms best interest the more we have invested in it.