Observations :

I have said this a few times on this platform, Steemit reminds me of the early days of the internet. It was free, wild and full of unlimited potential. Hacking was not done to destroy but to disseminate information to the people , empower them. Then the idiots moved in and while it still remained a place with huge potential darkness had it’s paws on pretty much every aspect.

People don’t like to see it, they say the Internet brings out the worst in people. I say it brings out whoever you are behind the mask. The Net is a reflection of our world population and let us be honest, most humans suck! they are greedy, self involved brats who really do not give a damn about anything outside of their own event horizon. Some are more ruthless than others and have accumulated enough power in which they can control the masses and the masses are to lethargic or comfortable to do anything about it.

The above history is repeating itself here on the Steemit platform the problem is that our history also shows that creating more rules, and giving more individuals the power to created said rules, always leads to a shitshow where some get fat and the rest is just vegetating.

The Solution :

So what to do about it well either we need an incorruptible benevolent dictator to regulate everything (not seeing that ever happening unless we are finally invaded by more advanced aliens) or we need to implement a system where community trumps whales.

The vikings often settled major disputes in the community in a gathering called a Ting. people would speak their case and then the ideas were upvoted by the greater community by hitting their sword on their shields- the idea with the most noise won. Obviously we are not going to post videos with us rattling our armour but we could code a digital equivalent within.

How?- let us say that after a certain percentage of downvote power (regardless if it was triggered by whale or the rest of us lowly meerfolk) the post would be put up for evaluation by the community. The posts payout would receive a 3 day delay. During that 3 day period the community could discuss on the post why it should, or why it should not receive the payout. During the quarantine period two buttons would appear, one to approve one to deny. Everyone in the community would have one vote and regardless of rank their vote would be equal in worth. The decision over the fate of the post would be determined by the ruling of this virtual Ting. The judgement would thus lay in the hands of the whole community not only those with the huge slices of power. A voting system like this would keep the Whales from being corrupted by power, but also curb some of the jealousy downvotes people love to engage in. - just my two cents.