Takes away % of the reward pool in control by the STEEM POWER holders and put it in the hand of the Steemit Inc nominees
This point is certainly so valid that it is reason enough for me to question it myself if Steemit is making a right call giving out delegations. Despite the fact that our business does receive one.
2-4 I'm less convinced of. I'm critical of Steemit Inc and many fundamental ideas of Steem, and let them know about it and why, every single day. (Although I see no point in joining the hate-train and bitterness that many have felt the urge to jump on in recent years). Also, I don't see how having a delegation is a big plus for being a witness. Imo it has done more the opposite where stakeholders who knows how much me and @howo does, full time, to work on Steem and test HFs still don't vote on our witness because they don't want to support businesses or apps receiving delegations. This far outweighs any small benefit it may have of attracting votes from our satisfied users, which are most often smaller votes. It's also worth reminding people that delegated stake don't influence witness voting, so it's not like we have a larger witness vote (I assume you already knew that).
My main pros for the delegations would probably be these 3:
The projects have to use their stake responsibly in order to maintain their delegation. Meaning that outgoing votes are almost entirely to users. I can say fore sure that we have retained hundreds of Steemians who would not be here and use Steem without us. That is not something I can say for most whales. So due to the expectations of the delegation receivers to use their stake responsibly, I think one could argue they've allocated new Steem better than most whales have (who often get involved in vote-trading/circle jerks or worse, vote-selling).
It may only take 1 app to go mainstream for Steem as a blockchain to rocket. Since as soon as one attracts the masses, they will all be on Steem. So delegating to projects is one way to increase the chance of at least some doing really well, even if that should not be steemit.
By having successful businesses grow on Steem, it showcases the value Steem Power can have for businesses elsewhere. This can directly create demand for Steem if we can indeed grow successful projects with delegations.
In any case, I can understand why people find it controversial, and I agree that there are some big negatives with it. However, it's not as simple as saying that it would be better without them, as existing whales and stakeholders still have everything to prove that they can use their stake to benefit Steem any better, and that we thus want to give them higher influence.
Very valuable input. I still stand behind my post. Thosr who received delegation grow their witness vote rapiidly through voting on their own posts and curation. This will be even more so under the new reward curve. The fact that people shun those who receive delegations just make my point stronger.
Ah, so your point is that because they get more Steem Power this way, their witness votes grow bigger too and thus they have a larger vote to give their own witness?
If this is your concern then it's simply not a very big problem. 1. Delegation receivers are not allowed to self-vote their posts, as it is considered an illegitimate use of delegation according to the guidelines. I know some have done this in the past, but it's a minority (we've never had more than 1% self-vote in a 31 day period, and usually only vote our own post less than once per month, which is close to 0). 2. These projects are usually powering down to fund their activities. While this may be another problem, it does mean that their witness votes are really small (almost never above 40k SP).
So the whole argument that they will grow over time thanks to the delegation and that it will impact witnesses is simply not holding up. Even if they somehow did power up everything you're still only looking at maybe 100k SP per year. Which is very, very little in terms of impacting which witnesses are in the top 20, or even top 50.
Lastly, even if I were to grant you all of the concerns you've laid out, I still don't think it is a big problem relative to the problem of other stakeholders not updating their witness votes. I don't even want to count how many witnesses we still have in the top 50 that have not made a single post or other forms of contributions to Steem in more than a year. Or who are even working full time on competing projects... This is far more problematic, as at least the delegation receivers have to be active on Steem, and rely on its security, sustainability and growth in order for their projects to be more valuable.
I don't know if you care much for Steem at this point, but perhaps you should shuffle around your own votes first since you're still supporting witnesses that have abandoned Steem completely and are missing blocks, have not updated their feed in months/years.