I see the airdrop as an entitlement, and the basis of entitlements generally revolve around the concept of social equality. By excluding a handful because of how they chose to vote, we not only undermined the sanctity of the vote but also disenfranchised those individuals. If we shift and say the airdrop was not an entitlement, but rather a "gift," then it ends up looking like a payoff for those who voted "correctly."
Ultimately, because of the nature of reality, those with money will seek power. Is it right to take people's money away? Generally, the answer to this question is no. But what if they are going to use their money to destroy or monopolize a public resource? Right there, you're getting into the antitrust type of laws. Bill gates got wrecked with that, and that didn't even stop him from seeking ultimate power and control.
The problem of the wealthy putting their boots on the neck of the poor is age-old, but it doesn't justify a mass culling of people based on their political ideologies. I think if those people got mirrored here on HIVE and saw that their token had a higher value than Steem, it would behoove them to retain and celebrate their stake.
They could have what in their eyes is the best of both worlds, a blockchain run by Sun and a token of a higher value run by a community. The competition between the two chains will result in a winner and a loser. The Stakeholders will be inclined to side with, or at the very least, not be in opposition to the victor.
Excluding Sun and his socks was reasonable, all things considered. Taking an additional 300 out based on arbitrary metrics was overkill. Now, they're in this guilty until proven innocent limbo and are forced to beg the community for inclusion. I wouldn't do it. I'd rather eat my shoe.
You've also got to consider that some of the consensus-of-stake may have been intentionally voting in such a way as to stop both parties from doing any more stupid shit.
Greeting the largest stakeholder with an immediate asset freeze right after a multimillion-dollar purchase was the first mistake as far as I'm concerned. If we assume the largest stakeholder is a threat, where does it end? There will always be a largest stakeholder. I think the community should have put him on notice in a public post that if he attempts to fork with astroturf witnesses, the chain will split.
The key point being they have to ask for Hivepower, not to ask for being part of the Hive blockchain. Their account exists on the chain and has the usual 3 Hive delegated to it so it can perform a few functions per day.
Right, so, their balance was censored on the mirrored accounts. However, they have the option of throwing themselves at the mercy of stakeholders who didn't vote outside of "the party."
It wasn't just because people voted for Justin's witness.
Justin could have run one witness node, and people were more than free to vote for it if they thought that his ideas were good for Steem.
However, he did NOT start one witness node ... instead he started 20 of them! And then he voted for all 20 of his own nodes with stake that was never meant to be voted with in the first place. He even used Exchange staked to vote in all 20 of his puppet accounts, which is wrong on so many levels.
Then he forced out ALL 20 of the witnesses that we, the people, had chosen to represent us on Steem.
A single individual is NOT allowed to run multiple Witness accounts, let alone use Steemit Inc and Exchange power to vote in even 1 real Witness let alone 19 Fake Witnesses; pushing out EVERYBODY that the Steem community democratically chose.
So nobody should have voted for Justin Sun's puppet Witnesses after all that he did. Yet nobody had HIVE withheld if they had only voted for one of Justin's accounts. People were still free to choose to vote for such a disgusting dictator. However, the people who voted in several of his Witness nodes (when only one vote per witness has ever been allowed) were not given the gift of HIVE tokens.
Everything that Justin did absolutely disgusted me,
so I completely understand why the majority voted not to have HIVE given to those who willingly decided to be Justin's "Flying Monkeys" while he paints himself as a victim; when in fact Justin was the perpetrator of great evil on our community.