Redistributing tokens is a balancing act. In most cases, forks probably want to keep ownership for users constant so users have at least the same incentives to use the new fork as the historical one.

Bitcoin's value is the same: It will remain as long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring ownership.

Forks often arise from differences of opinion in the direction of a project. And tokens are increasingly a mechanism for voting on changes to their protocols. Since the point of a fork is to try a new path, the new fork may not want to port all of the prior holders opposed to trying the new path the fork was created to take.

The Internet will continue to be valuable so long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring data. Bitcoin's value is the same: It will remain as long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring ownership.

Just as the Internet brought the cost of disseminating information down by an order of magnitude, bitcoin brings the cost of transferring ownership down by an order of magnitude.

Ethereum may make monetary policy decisions like, 'Let's do 1% inflation to support the ongoing development of the Ethereum protocol.' A token built on Ethereum might want to do the same.