I am committed to building a system that empowers people who work for the benefit of all and disempowers those who attempt to work against the best interest of the wider community.
But the question arises, who will decide what is useful and what is harmful for Steemit? And if those who decide make a mistake? What if one whale will offer a better solution than the hundreds of dolphins?
Those who have the most to lose have the most say. There is no other way.
I don't want to get too philosophical, but the problem is a good leader. You can't replace a good leader with ten bad. It won't work. You can't replace a good doctor ten bad. It is not equivalent replacement.
I would have thought about the criteria of a good leader. It would be right, in my opinion, to develop a system of symptoms, which can give a numerical assessment of the quality of leadership of the person.
And it would be right to think about the system of education which can make good leaders.
You have to make one good doctor. Ten bad doctors do not help. How to separate the bad from the good doctor. Here is what is in my opinion a significant issue.
What good is democracy if the people choose bad leaders. If people are not able to distinguish good leaders from bad. If you don't think about it, all the problems of the existing social system will appear here.
But it turns out that the power will be in the hands of a certain group of rich people. What is the difference with current social system? Nowadays in modern society the power belongs to the group of rich people who are corrupt and ceased to think about the interests of the majority. Steemit will give power to another group of rich people. How can you be sure that they will not act as irresponsibly as some of the current leaders of society?
Please don't get me wrong, Dan. I ask these questions not because I'm against you, but because I want to make Steemit more perfect.
The difference between the current social system and Steem is this: in Steem power is closely related to responsibility, which means those who have power and abuse it act against their own long-term interest.
This close link between power and responsibility is not perfect here in Steem, but still much better than anywhere else.
A man may be mistaken in regard to his long-term interests. Isn't it?
A small child does not want to learn, he wants to play. But in his best long-term interest to get a good education. However, he does not understand this. Because of the foolishness we sometimes act against our own interests.
No one wants to deliberately act against his interests. But due to foolishness (and therefore mistakes) it happens. Do the leaders of Steemit completely free from making mistakes?
Why is it better?
This is true but it has nothing to do with Steem. No system can protect you from human mistakes when intentions are good. All we can do is align the interests of those who have power with the interests of the whole system. And this is what Steem does. There is no other way.
As @dantheman has said: those who have the most power in Steem, have the most to lose if things go wrong. This is not necessarily true in other economic systems, e.g. corporations.
The difficulty is to determine what is good and what is bad for Steemit. This is the difficulty. It's like in medicine. One good doctor can prescribe the right treatment, while ten bad doctors will prescribe wrong. But if they have the same power of voice, the patient will not recover.
So if a hypothetical "evil cabal of corporations" wanted to make their bad whales to subvert the system, there is no recourse, right? We just have to live with the 'might makes right' system?
If I am not mistaken some weeks ago you made the point of corporations buying in and advertisement, sorry I can't recall what exactly you said, but essentially you expect that there will be some future actors with deep pockets that will then be able to exert their influence. It seems like that eventuality needs some way of curtailing it's potential for harm. And if that is the case, then perhaps the notion of "Those who have the most to lose have the most say" needs to be adjusted in some fashion.
Considering this platform, if it lives up to it's ultimate potential, can disrupt the business model of so many industries, the possibility of just such a subversion is probable. It's not even illegal (not like that would prevent them anyway).
I understand that there is more to the algorithm than that statement, but it would seem that we can't be married to that idea as an immutable fact. There is the possibility of there being some other way.
It seems that any overt advertising would not get upvoted, and get forgotten. Unless a swarm of millennials join, then it might begin looking like mypace. Doubt it. But deep pocket influencers could put out disinformation.