...getting early adopter advantages for no real good reason.
There actually are good reasons.
Early adopters (especially buyers) take much more risk by putting their time and other resources (especially money) into a new and unproven product. They are often rewarded much better for that higher risk.
Early adopters on Steem that have been rewarded with more shares (stake) is really no different than investors who get in early with real-world businesses and are able to buy their shares during Series A funding over Series B. Those who invest early often get preferred stock, which can guarantee a higher dividend and which has priority when it comes to distribution.
Early adopters on Steem (miners, buyers, witnesses, other users) bootstrapped the blockchain/network. They assumed much higher risk than those who joined once the system was openly tested, adjusted, and further secured over time. In fact, many early users found their accounts “hacked” via an exploit that needed to be fixed several months after public launch.
So to claim that there is “no good reason” for early-adopter advantages completely ignores the fact that early adoption is what can drive early success...and that the higher risk almost always comes with higher rewards - and it ought to. Any tangible amount of success is usually dependent on it.
Now, that being said...plenty of mistakes have been made here along the way and a lot of these early adopters were handed a lot of money and “influence” for no other reason than showing up. There could have been a little more discretion regarding where the rewards were distributed (both by the code and by humans), but that’s not a great reason to dismiss the early-adopter concept as a whole.
Sure -- I suppose that's a totally valid, if not traditional, way to look at it.
I think though that that view ("Satisfying Investors") needs to be analyzed w/ the marketing / message (the "Panacea of the Almighty Blockchain") that people are delivering at the same time:
It strikes me as trying to deliver a message of fantastical promises, while trying as hard as possible to wrangle/constrict a new idea/technology into the well-understood (and abused) little box of an "oldschool heirarchical organizational structure". All while ignoring the fact that that's kinda what people were excited to try to get away from in the first place (as far as I understand it).
Long story short: