Anarchy Sounds Great Until, a Decision Needs to be Made or When People Can't Handle Their Own Freedom
anarchy
noun an·ar·chy \ˈa-nər-kē, -ˌnär-\
Definition of anarchy
1
a : absence of government
b : a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority the city's descent into anarchy
c : a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government
2
a : absence or denial of any authority or established order anarchy prevailed in the ghetto
b : absence of order : disorder
Many steemians were attracted to the steemit platform for the rebellious nature of a decentralized form of social media. Joining steemit and leaving the facebooks and twitters behind. Watching them censor their way into the dust bin of history. Steemit has few guidelines such as, plagiarism is not condoned and will be punished accordingly and material needs to be sourced.
I would hazard a guess that the great majority of those on steemit would identify somewhat with political terms like: Libertarian, anarchist, anarcho-capitalist or some other terms that signify freedom of speech, decentralization and limited rules/laws.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are similar in nature to steemit, in the sense that they are designed around a notion of anonymity, limited rules and decentralization. Nobody knows anything about Satoshi Nakamoto, the man that founded bitcoin on the blockchain, leaving a loose network of willing contributors to maintain the coin. Here is a brief description from
Today the site is an independent open source project with contributors from around the world...Bitcoin is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world. Developers are improving the software but they can't force a change in the rules of the Bitcoin protocol because all users are free to choose what software they use. In order to stay compatible with each other, all users need to use software complying with the same rules. Bitcoin can only work decently with a complete consensus between all users. Therefore, all users and developers have strong incentives to adopt and protect this consensus.
Where bitcoin struggles with it's utopian society, free from governance, is that occasionally, a decision does have to be made and making a decision doesn't always lead to a consensus of the constituents. The current issue with bitcoin is a problem with scalability that needs resolution. I won't go into the details on scalability, but the bitcoin universe needs to finalize a decision of what direction they will go and soon.
They have reached a Hard Fork and there is some dissension between developers and miners that seemingly has not been resolved and they're is no centralized figure to cast the deciding vote. You could say that without a concise roadmap from this point, bitcoin could be descending towards anarchy.
Which brings this post back to Steemit. Steemit is loaded with creative types: Artists, photographers, writers, developers and more. The platform allows them to bring their content to the table and allows others to appraise it for what it's worth, respond to the material or even bestow a small reward. There aren't many tools available to those who choose to curate content, they can upvote, downvote, comment, resteem or ignore it all together.
Steemit is corporately owned and has a defined leader, @ned. From my perspective, it appears that there is limited intrusion on the site by "leadership". Yes, they tweak the payouts and change some protocol from one hard fork to the next, but the day to day operations of the blogging platform are left to the user's volition. Witnesses continue to push through new blocks on the chain and interact with the rest of steemworld, but don't have authority to sanction a steeminan with anything but a downvote.
That brings me to my point. Since HF19, there has been a lot of griping on steemit regarding the rewards pool and the voting strategies employed by steem users. Self-Upvoting, Auto-Curating, Multi-Account Self-Voting are three topics that stand apart from the noise on the platform. People have become so agitated by these topics, they are preparing to build bots to punish behavior they don't like. Others are calling for hashtags that would identify the supposed wrong doers and reward them for noting the behavior.
I don't know if it's moral indignation or just plain greed that is inspiring regular steemians to call for action against perceived injustice!
Potentially it's just the hangover from being part of the facebooks and twitters of the world, where there is active enforcement of perceived wrong-doing.
Steemit is the social-media vanguard for freedom and decentralized leadership. Take a second look at Merriam-Webster's third definition for anarchy:
It appears that some on Steemit cannot handle the amount of freedoms that have been bestowed on them. Each individual has the ability to manage their investment as they choose. If I dump $500k into steem, I have the right to only upvote myself all day long. Leave a shit comment, upvote. Post a picture of my butt, upvote. Whatever I want to do, inside the framework of the platform, and you can't say shit about it.
Actually you can, you could come after me with your holier-than-thou downvote or bot, that PUNISHES those that do not conform to your concept of fairness and communal spirit. Which in turn would likely incite a downvote war between the crusaders and the targets. People would take their investment elsewhere, once realizing that this supposedly utopian society was nothing more than a group of evangelists that can't survive in a world without structure and policing!
Let's remember what drew us to steemit in the first place, a lack of censorship, decentralization, the opportunity to earn rewards and community. The base rules are structured very simply and allow us to conduct ourselves, pretty much, any way we see fit. Don't fall victim to the call for constructs and rigidity to be placed on what is the freest society on the internet. If you don't like the voting strategies of others, too bad, you'll have to ignore it. They are not stealing your money from the rewards pool, they are taking a return on their investment. Without their investment the pool you are currently swimming in would start to get a wee bit smaller.
Stop trying to take away the rights and freedoms of others. If you don't like it, create your own platform or better yet, go back to where you came from and enjoy the social media police state that exists there. Bye-Bye!
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All images courtesy of https://www.pixabay.com
I was all prepared to disagree based on the title, but it seems we're aligned. :)
Was planning to say "an-archy" is just "mon-archy" minus one -- instead of there being "one leader above the laws", there is "no leader above the laws."
The laws still exist; if nothing else, then "common law", which is essentially Scriptural in basis. Which is kinda neat, in my journey. :)
Coming up with correct titles can sometimes be a struggle. I'm glad we are aligned on this topic. "No leader above the laws" is the only way to reign them in.
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by wakeupsheeps from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.
100% agree with the points you make... but seems like greed throws moral out of the window... its human nature to take advantage of freedom... unfortunatelly we can not have it all... but lets hope for the best.
Greed tends to throw all other logic out the window @dragonator.
Just please warn me ahead of time if you are gonna upload a picture of your butt. I'll upvote it, but that doesn't mean I have to look at it.
I get the sense that some people who tout only the virtues of anarchy underestimate the downside. There is no perfect system.
Right, there is no perfect system, I just get annoyed when someone begins complaining about the system that they freely joined and now want to improve it with greater policing.
I will keep butt pics to a minimum.
excellent work
@wakeupsheeps
You obviously didn't read the article. Your response was far too quick. Please don't comment on my post's if you have no intention of reading them. This type of behavior is frowned upon by the steemit community and will not make you very popular.
What's amusing (to me) is I just saw that bot on another post, acting like a bot!
Yep, it was on this post: https://steemit.com/music/@sir3nal/sad-news-r-i-p-linkin-park-singer-chester-bennington-2017720t20113994z
I just saw that three bot salute. Something needs to be done with this bot trash. @libertyteeth.
This post got a
24.99% upvote thanks to @wakeupsheeps - Hail Eris !