Back in 2017 whales needed to grow the community to make their mined stakes financially valuable, so they upvoted n00bs they noticed for a couple weeks. When there were suddenly >1M new accounts they realized their ability to maintain a majority of stake was impossible with that level of distribution, and HW began DV'ing accounts to their breaking point, gradually and suddenly reducing users to that level the oligarchy found optimal. That's where we are today, with ~3-5k users on Hive.
Because Pharsesim and the oligarchy maintain a majority of stake, they maintain control of the witnesses, and that maintains control of the code, and that maintains their ability to secure the majority of rewards and of stake. So einfach is das.
Thanks!