You don't need to lockup your investment for 1 year weighted average cashout in order to speculate.
You don't have this massive inflation.
This is double counting. If you do lock up your investment then you don't have the massive inflation. Especially since liquid supply is now over 10%. SP are now effectively deflationary (though one risk is there is no guarantee that continues for any particular time into the future).
Disagree. The confluence of the two makes the prognosis for locking up dismal because there is no investment case, and not even any medium-term speculation case thus no liquidity.
Can't agree with you here. The issue with locking up is not inflation.
There is a confluence because since inflation destroys the speculator who doesn't lockin, then there is no reliable liquidity for those who lockin. Thus the inflation does negatively impact the lockin investor.
Remember that when a Coasian barrier is applied to the Invisible Hand (of the free market), it can't do just one thing. Surely you are well aware that the no edict or forced action can ever do only the thing it purports to do.
It might be that the application is a bad idea, execution is poor, competitors are stronger, etc, but none of those reasons for not wanting to invest in something for 1-2+ years have anything to do with inflation.
That is mostly inapplicable to my point, except that a lack of speculation liquidity can also remove a reason to invest for 1 year while it is only a low. Typically altcoins collapse to a long valley low for a year or so, and then after bottom fishing accumulation they get a pump. But since you can't cash out on a pump, this is entirely impossible for Steem. See edicts can't do just one thing. There is a confluence of negative effects. Clearly you now understand you are incorrect on this.
The liquidity factor is also negligible in those terms, where you are willing to invest for years because you view the prospects are very good. (Take AlexGR for example, he seems reasonably positive about it longer term, and likely doesn't care that he has to be locked in for at last 1-2 years.) Plenty of people invest in privately-held businesses, real estate, etc. without liquidity. Hell, even very large investments in highly-raded traded public companies aren't really liquid.
You can't cite anecdotes to prove aggregate effects. If you want a competing anecdote then refer to the Steemit blog where that multimillionaire anti-virus software personality John McAfee said he invests in blockchains but not Steemit because there isn't enough liquidity.
But whether we agree or disagree on this point doesn't really matter, since we clearly agree that the blogging model that is the focus of Steemit today is not a good model to want to invest in longer term (or at all). Frankly I'm disappointed that Steemit ended up going in that direction because the white paper wasn't really blogging oriented. I think that seems to be what they got done on the web development side in time for their (likely rushed) launch, so it ended up going that way.
In theory the Steem blockchain could be used for other activities.
But I think it is not the blogging activity choice that is the fundamental problem. Rather it is the model of distributing payouts via voting, which is a fundamental aspect of Steem's blockchain (for now at least). And the necessary whale control over it, otherwise it would be Sybil attacked. It is a quagmire and in my estimation the odds of them finding a successful way forward is roughly 100-to-1.