I think the price of stability tends to be high in bear markets. Loss of confidence means lower appetite for leverage. I don't expect such a high loss in a more average year.
I wrote a new blog post explaining how RAI works, from the perspective of supply and demand for stablecoins: https://dankradfeist.de/ethereum/2023/01/31/rai-crypto-experiment.html
Ethereum research will host a reddit AMA on Jan 11 at 1pm UTC https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/107cqi8/ama_we_are_ef_research_pt_9_11_january_2023/
Interesting examples. What's the deeper reason if there is one? I would guess many of us find communities built around a single principle somewhat repelling, which may be a protective mechanism to stop us from joining dangerous cults?