Great post. If I had a few thousand to spare, I would DEFINITELY use it to power up - bearing in mind that there is risk involved and you should only invest what you can afford to lose.
Like you, I enjoy being nosey and checking out other people's accounts now and then. You can learn a lot from it. There are a couple of people, maybe more, who have very large SP who have never published a single blog post on the platform. They earn on their investment from curation. I see that as part of the genius of Steemit, and if more people did this, the value of Steem would increase. I certainly would, if I was in a position to do so.
There's just one thing that concerns me about this - what if a very big player decided to invest in SP in order to buy a controlling influence – for example, an agency of an oppressive government, rewarding only posts that were favourable to that government and flagging any posts that presented opinions it didn't approve of? I would like to see more "ordinary folks" without an agenda investing in SP so that the value would rise so much that it would be impossible for one big player to achieve a controlling stake. I hope the platform grows organically for that reason.
One other thing - I powered down around Christmas time, when the value of SBD rocketed. I'd only been active on the platform for about a month; I'd had a couple of great Curie votes and I had some big bills to pay. It made my Christmas a happy one instead of an anxious time. At the time I hadn't fully twigged the importance of holding onto SP, and I haven't powered down since - in fact, I invested a little.
I wish I had a few thousand too, I could get it but that would compromise my other more stable investments and this is more risky than those.
There are users such as @hr1 who just gain curation rewards, but at the same time helping the likes of us enormously. I keep trying get a comment from this person, but have failed so far, hello @hr1!
There are whales and orcas who do have somewhat controlling interests and can punish your rewards and rep if they like. I tend to keep out of the way of these people and focus on the content. as that is what this is all about.
I think if what you mention, a government started posting here, we could just ignore their posts. They would gain little in terms of votes in fear of retribution.
I agree about @hr1. I tend to keep out of the way of whales and orcas too, unless I really like what they're doing. And I hope you're right re- possible government account.