Thank you very much for posting this sales pitch. I think that despite what many complain about with pricing, it is our pricing that allows people like you to go market a reasonable business model.
The problem is never about price, it is always about sales and value. You can convince people to over pay for something if they are "buying brand" or "philosophy". Selling to the "premium" customer is how Tesla is boostraping and is ultimately how all new technology needs to start out. Going after the marginal customer (those not willing to pay you a dime) is not a great way to grow a business.
I pretty much agree with your strategy despite the fact that I really am into the micropayments idea.
But again, how do we promote financial independence through Bitshares, and then market the concept? So many people I talk to don't even know what financial independence is and believe that people should work just to not sink. Financial independence would mean true freedom because a person would have a safety net of dividend paying assets.
Instead people seem to prefer to live day to day, debt to debt, off credit and money printed by banks out of thin air, backed by absolutely nothing. It seems people prefer to depend on large centralized institutions, centralized exchanges, central government, which ultimately means their fate in life depends on the decisions of an ever decreasing amount of people all who are subject to corruption or influence.
Depending on the market for employment is fine but if people save or invest in dividend paying assets then they only have to depend on the growth of capitalism itself. GDP is likely to continue to grow, and stocks are likely to continue to grow up, even if the jobs people currently are doing become obsolete. Unfortunately half of Americans don't own stock, and some don't even believe in capitalism, but even if people don't believe in capitalism the capability exists to build gift economies or to barter over Bitshares and these capabilities should be marketed to people who don't like traditional forms of exchange.
In the end people want self sufficiency or they want dependency. The people who want self sufficiency represent the demographic who can understand Bitshares. How do we reach them? I think we have to identify the core psychology behind the self sufficiency and financial independence movement. I don't think it's a political ideology, I think it's a psychological outlook which most of us share.
Almost 100,000 people:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FinancialIndependencehttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/your-money/supersavers-focus-on-the-goal.html