Your analogy is flawed. You state that the current system stokes innovation people will "target their writing to interest the community." Except, right now it seems like you need to target your writing to interest the whales.
In effect, it's not appreciably different than the centrally planned economy... a few people at the top decide what's popular. People on the bottom try to convince them they should be popular.
Let's go back to your post-it notes. Arthur Fry, the inventor, makes exactly the same amount of money if Bill Gates buys a pack of post-it notes as he does when I buy a pack of post-it notes. Arthur wasn't thinking of Bill when he created the invention, he was thinking "lots of people might find this useful."
Admittedly, I'm still new around here... and things may change over time as whales become less important. However right now it seems like there's a strong incentive to cater to whale interests, then to community interests, rather than to promote your own ideas and write quality posts.
You seem to be among the folks who suggest that we can't measure the true "value" of a post on Steemit based on its dollar value (since whales overly influence that) nor by its number of upvotes (because the opinion of minnow voters is corrupted by pandering to whales).
There are at least two reasons to doubt these contentions. First is that Steem, like unregulated markets in general, is organized around the principle that the people whose vote counts most also have the most to lose if they are wrong. Free markets built upon this principle function as remarkably useful prediction markets, and provide accurate information about society's preferences and values, despite the fact that "whales" control these markets too. Second, the type of content that gets upvoted here on Steemit is exactly the type of content that gets upvoted on other social media sites like Reddit, FB, Twitter, etc. where whales don't have outsized votes. Actually, if anything, there's less porn, trolling, memes and pandering to the lowest common denominator here on Steemit than on most of these more "democratic" sites.
In any event, by my personal taste, the quality here on Steemit is actually excellent. Earlier this morning on the front Trending page we have the following (in order):
*. A post by the well know Dollar Vigilante.
*. A Steemit exclusive post from New York Times best-seeking author Neil Strauss describing for the first time ever his difficult childhood and his long struggle to become a successful writer.
*. An awesome original post about OP's experience in the Himalayas.
*. Steemit's first ever "dance tutorial" (original content). You may not appreciate it, but I assure you there's a great many people who do.
*. An excellent original piece of photojournalism on why women to go bars (tons of awesome photography). The piece is written in both Chinese and English.
*. Several original charts from some pretty good technical analysts
*. A travel diary on OP's trip to Zion National Park, complete with some awesome original photos.
*. "Indentured Solitude"--Part 1 of an original 4 part work of fiction.
And...I'll stop there for now. I think these post represent both good quality and good diversity.
The inventor of Post-it notes may make the same money when Bill Gates buys a pack as when you do, but Bill Gates (or at least Microsoft) buys a shit ton more packs than you do. Fry and 3M have made the vast majority of their money providing solutions to (or "pandering to", as you call it) very powerful businesses (whales), not minnows like you and me.
Aside from your big assumptions about me...
"the people whose vote counts most also have the most to lose if they are wrong."
What do whales lose if they're wrong? Is there a penalty for upvoting something that no one else does? And aren't people incentivized to upvote a post simply because a whale did so, thus removing the chance of him being "wrong?"
Let's make another comparison that's perhaps more appropriate (given that post-it's have largely business use, while Steem is closer to an entertainment/information service.)
Look at YouTube. Anything and everything can be posted there, and it's led to new forms of entertainment that I doubt could have ever gotten through Hollywood. Unboxing videos? Let's Play? That sound thing I can't remember the name of?
Right now Steemit is more like Hollywood. Impress a big producer/whale and your project gets made, and you make millions. Youtube, however, which is essentially 1 follower = 1 vote, means lots of little guys finding little niches and making money.
And as long as there's a work of fiction in your list, think about that. What if none of the whales like mystery, or horror, or fantasy or romance? Any one of those genres could fail to get real traction on this site based on the tastes of a few people at the top.
Again, I'm not naysaying the site, merely talking through my early observations. I'd kind of expect that over time the whales will become less important... but I'm also thinking some tweaks to the system might facilitate that. (Maybe, again, still new and learning the system.)
Steem doesn't lose value if a whale up votes a single "bad" post. But if whales consistently up vote crap content (which everyone seems to be worried will happen for some unexplainable reason), and posters of quality content are not sufficiently recognized, the posters of quality content will stop posting. Without the opportunity to read or post quality content and have it recognized, users won't come to the platform. Fewer users equals less demand for Steem. Less demand for Steem means a lower Steem price.
Consistently upvoting crap has nothing to do with anything I've said. I'm more worried that good stuff will be missed because it doesn't fit the whales' tastes. So you're deliberately promoting LGBT, but would you deliberately promote content that was fundamentally opposed to your philosphies? Can you be sure other whales feel the same?
It becomes a non-issue if everyone can promote things based only on their taste. People who like LGBT will upvote LGBT, and those authors will see money trickle in slowly. Without that... they are dependent on you. It's not much different than the Patrons of old really...
LOL... trying to figure out how to use the Steem API to look through my transaction history and I found this!
Not to dredge up the argument again, but it doesn't seem like much has changed... there's still a limited variety, minnows still struggle to get noticed, and now a couple whales have pissing contests on the trending page.
If whales are wrong, the value of Steem declines. Whales own the most Steem. Hence whales lose more if they are wrong.
No, if they understand the system, people are not incentivized to vote after whales. Rather, they are incentivized to vote BEFORE them. It's the early voters who get most of the curation rewards on a given post. Many people make this mistake.
What empirical evidence do you have that pandering to whales is resulting in different, and presumably inferior, content being posted here compared to other social media sites? From what I can tell, it's mostly the same stuff (though perhaps far more crypto focused)--travel blogging, philosophical and political debates, pretty girls (though less than on, say, Reddit), persuasive writing, fiction, photos, etc. There's no evidence that I can see that Steemit content is materially different than, and certainly not lessor than, content on other platforms.
I do share your concerns to some degree. For instance, I've invited several notable authors to join Steemit who write primarily for the LGBT community. To date their posts here have gotten little to no attention. But, I'm convinced that will change over time, both because the currency will be more widely distributed, and because whales are not stupid--ultimately they will support posts that don't interest them personally simply because it's in their economic interests to do so. For instance, I have little personal interest in reading LGBT oriented material (its just not my thing, not that there's anything wrong with that), but I consciously invited two different LGBT-focused authors to join and post here, and I've made every effort to up vote and promote them whenever I can.
How does steem "lose value" if a whale upvotes a bad post?