As I said, that is not likely. If a bunch of pool hoopers have invested shares in a small pool in the begining of a block (they seem to do that until some point early in the block) and this pool is currently starving (left with a huge block to solve and little hashing power to do it), pool hoppers will go back to it helping finish it (as long as there's no more profitable alternatives).
The problem in your reasoning is where I added emphasis. A pool hopper can always contributed to a PPS pool. So there will always be more profitable alternatives.
Hm... And what about Proportional pools? Should we
all leave them? I don't think that is very civic... As long as there are pool owners holding Proportional pools, pool hoppers should be welcome into them. Actually, many small pools would not get any blocks if they were not Proportional, since people would rather mine in a well-stablished pool... this leave just the pool hoppers to get into that new pool.
IMHO, if your argument is "leave all the Proportional pools out to die of starvation", my point is made. No need for further discussion.
And it's not accurate that "pool hoppers profit at the expense of the non-hoppers". After all, they have actually invested hashing power... they just point their hashing power to some (currently) more profitable pool... IMHO, it's the same as investing money in a more profitable stock.
Pool hoppers do profit at the expense of the non-hoppers. The more pool hoppers in a pool, the less return per-share those who feed the pool shares at a constant rate get. That is a fact.
That is not a fact. I am sorry, but that seems to be an assumption you made based in some biased view of the game. Those "non-hoppers" that are in the pool might not even had what to share among them if not by the hashing power added (briefly) by the hoppers. Let me put it this way: if a non-hopper would be given this choice: (a) mine in a pool which accepts only non-hoppers and take a week to solve a block or (b) mine in a pool which accepts hoppers and non-hoppers and solve a block in half a week, what do you think the non-hopper would choose?
It all comes down to the fact that profit cannot be taken in account alone and depends on time. I want to have 1 million dollars in account, but I want it now... not when I am too old to spend it. So, non-hoppers would choose (b). So should everybody. And that is the (oversimplified) economics of it.