I think you make good points. Ned did not do anything illegal or immoral to acquire his stake. This means there is no legal or moral justification to take away his stake. The issue isn't in my opinion his stake but it is more that there is an element in the community which wants equality, fairness, and which will use downvotes, forks, or any other technical means to enforce their values.

On some of this I cannot side with Ned. Ned did not believe privacy was important when myself and others mentioned maybe perhaps we should allow account holders to mask their wallet values or make private transactions. Now he's moving his stuff around seeking enhanced privacy for his own account but what about everyone else?

There is a jealousy problem in the community. On that I do think maybe privacy would have been better from the beginning. At the same time the Steemit account has so much of a stake that it could actually put Steemit Inc in legal risk if Ned is CEO of Steemit Inc and also owns the Steemit account. It looks centralized is what I'm saying in the same manner that Ripple does.