Let's do a little thought experiment!
Whales invest in Steemit for profits. We can see from BTC in the last 6 months that the best way to profit from investment is capital gains. If you'd bought BTC in May at $1k, and sold at $20k, you'd have made 20 times your money.
Whales on Steemit aren't getting that from mining the rewards pool, but they are managing to keep retention down to ~10%.
Steemit is how the market for Steem is grown, it's special use case. By doing things that will retain users on Steemit, the market for Steem will grow, and upwards price pressure will apply to Steem.
Capital gains for investors will be the result.
However, driving 90% of users off the platform YOY will cause the price to stagnate, and eventually go to zero.
Then investors will have all the Steem, and it will be worthless.
This matters.
@haejin doesn't.