people hate this but people should hate blatant rent seeking behaviours even more.

if channels ever gets decentralised it needs a sort of renting system where you pay rent as a % of total worth and that worth being the price you'd be happy for someone to immediately take it off you.

Not every small channel is speculation. Lots are just owned by people with jobs who sometimes take awhile to launch a side project.

Rather than assuming ill-faith and making blatant accusations, actual speculation (holding a name and then transferring to an unrelated party, assumedly for payment), should be identified in situ and penalized with permanent deletion of the channel.

That would distinctivize speculation while also eliminating the market for speculators. Easy.