depressing when your importance slides

do exchanges build up a bs level of importance on the NEM network?
You don't need to be depressed.
In Poloniex's case, they use user's fund in harvesting less than 25%.
(More than 75% is stored in cold wallet, and do not harvest.)
This is less than ordinary nember's use of xem in harvesting.
Perhaps, ordinary nember's harvesting might become higher owing to their not-doing-harvesting-fund in coldwallet.
no exchange should be gaining POS coins from users funds

RIP NEM. Make exchanges rich and they dump free coins.

its worse then that if exchanges stake, also you and i send coins we get fees, on the coins we stake we earn (at this point it seems no matter what I do my fees will always exceed my stake earnings, hold my network importance goes down, move or use i get fees).
now exchanges can use our coins to earn, but charge us the fees for moving, HUGE win win for them LOSE LOSE for genuine holders, all the while the increase their network importance, further more ripping the users off who's coins they are borrowing

Seems exchanges will eventually OWN NEM

You know, this whole issue wouldn't be as much of an issue if so many NEM holders - and crypto coin holders in general (this isn't unique to NEM) - weren't so quick to move their coins to exchanges to dump.
For a lot people here it really is all about getting BTC to get fiat and nothing more - crypto's only a means to an end (fiat). Any coin (including BTC) is just a temporary bus stop to fiat. Let's face the fact that this is the mentality, which is why exchanges have so much market power over crypto prices to begin ith, whether they stake or not (expect more to stake by the way as crypto trading volume continues to shrink on many of these exchanges and they look for ways to raise more revenue aside from trading fees)/
A ridiculous percentage of NEM ended up right on Poloniex after the initial distribution - lots of people raced to dump. I think it also reflects the low level of trust in crypto - lots of people have little faith that any of these coins retain their value for long and, judging from what we've seen in crypto the past two years, who can blame them?