I had thought steemit would be more immune to cronyism initially, but the GINI coefficients on wealth distribution worry me. As does the incentive to vote on already high powered users (perhaps there should be a logarithmic function in place to force some dispersion? Though I believe that's already in place with reputation, so probably not...).
Given that the reward mechanism in steemit is transparent, the issue should be easier to solve than in the outside world.
Even though I have no idea what a "logarithmic function" is, the idea of "forcing some dispersion" might be worth looking into by the powers-that-be.
I believe witnesses and whales have strong, maybe influential voices in the Steemit ecosystem, so if you (or, less likely, if I) ever rise to that level, we can keep it in mind and work to build or sustain an equitable system.
Sorry, a logarithmic function is just a log function.
For example, in a base-10 log function: log(10)=1; log(100)=2; log(1000)=3 (etc). It's a common rescaling technique makes the difference between 10 and 1000 "smaller".