Please explain where my stupidity is misguided. My impression was that if the pool hashrate did not change, but the difficulty went up (due to the target number of blocks "found" occured earlier than the target time) that your "reward" per block would not change, but the number of blocks the pool would resolve would be lower due to the increased difficulty, thereby reducing your "daily reward". That being said, the reason that the Cryptocurrency miner would have to continually increase their hashrate (buy more equipment or OC their current stock) would be to increase the pool hashrate such that the number of blocks "found" by the pool would increase to the point where the "Number of blocks found" x "the reduced reward$" would equal the previously established "Daily reward", thereby maintaining the status quo. Further detailed explaination is anticipated with great eagerness!