I think bernie gained a lot of power from being an early adopter. Now there are content creators who are developing a following within steemit as well as bringing new people to the platform. Having new wales depletes bernies power and control so he is trying to stop or slow it down. He may have had, or still has good intentions, but he is also a control freak and a nasty individual.
I was one of the first people to write to bernie in his "haejin is raping the rewards pool" post. I explained how haejin had built a following (including me) over months of posting and that he was bringing a lot of new followers to the platform.
Bernie called me a moron.
Bringing new people to steam and encouraging content creators is the way to grow the platform. Starting a flag war, belittling the newcomers, and throwing around baseless accusations (as bernie has done) is poison to this platform.
I understand your point perfectly (or so I tend to think). Bernie is definetely too easy to get rage. I didn't saw him accepting that he is wrong or making apologises ever (mabe he did but I was not around). Now I can't make assumptions about why is he leading this war of flags which definetely is not good for the platform. He is maybe driven by greed and a control freak against people like haejin. He may be on the otherside driven by healthy principles like care for the good distribution of the reward pool, I can't say this either.
On the other side, I don't find good enough the acts of haejin in face of the people on this site. He has brought pretty much people on Steem, this is true and it seems like a good thing for the platform. The downside of this approach is that many of these newcomers to the platform are people who do not produce much content and just use their votes for haejin. I have talked to some of them and they were really believing that there is no other content whoch deserved to be voted other than that produced by haejin. The second thing which I don't find qute healthy here is that he is really taking pretty much from the reward pool (you can check his blog at this moment and see that he started to post a lot with a lot of rewards, at least for me who I don't make that rewards since I am here:)). He once said that he is rich and he doesn't care of the rewards which doesn't make sense since he didn't declined a payout (at least since I am following).
I don't know, these are the things that does not make sense to me, and I am afraid to ask these questions to any of them as I will be vanished from Steem in the very next moment by a much powerful flags that my account can handle. I am too small here...
Even if someone is well off, it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't want, or shouldn't be rewarded by their work.
Bernie Sanders is rich, but he also profits from his rando whale bot. No one expects him to not profit from it, and no one should expect that.
Many of newcomers that haejin brought to the platform do only vote for him and have not contributed yet to the platform. Most of them have been on the platform for less than 2 months. If those people were given the time to acclimate to the platform, many of them would likely find other content to upvote and probably eventually begin to create content themselves. This war will not encourage that.
This war will also not be good for people following other youtube content creators who have joined the platform. @davidpackman joined steemit about 2 months ago. He is bringing a lot of people to steemit that will likely only follow him at first. He posts multiple times a day, and many of his posts are making more than $100 each.
Should @davidpackman and any other content creators who bring a following and become "too" successful be downvoted too?
I think instead they should be encouraged.
I think they should be encouraged. Bringing more people and more creators to steemit will help the platform grow and help the value of the platform to increase. This is good for everyone.
Thank you for having this discussion with me. There are not many good faith discussions happening on this matter.