Dashholders check in but they never check out.
I checked out.
It is certainly true that receiving masternode payments, voting on budget proposals through you masternode and working towards your next masternode
can all become very addictive. Dashholders seem to make more longterm goals for themselves.
Don't forget about the miners who secure your essential POW network, having to give (45%!!) of their hard-earned to people who have no running costs.
Without Masternodes they would either secure a shitcoin without value or they wouldn't even bother to mine it.
Masternode network is what gives Dash value. Darksend and Instantx is there thanks to it.
In this I agree, but the rewards are grossly excessive for the services provided.
Not so sure. It was said that Dash needs something like 4000 MN to scale up. At the beginning you risk a lot in this highly volatile market thus you get a high reward (in Dash not $). Once network will be approx. at 4000 MN, you're going to get about 6 dash per MN per month. It looks excessive when there are low number of nodes but not when there are thousands. It will balance itself, market discounts everything and it will be reflected in the price.