RE: The ideal of "fair distribution" in cryptocurrencies (and Steem): Can it exist in real life?
The difference between steem and the world, is that steem is so concentrated that its bound to get better because it can't get any worse, while the world is still in a phase of wealth consolidation into the hands of the few. In other words most participants in the world economy will get poorer next year (as wealth consolidation continues) while most participants in steem economy will get richer next year (as wealth is increasingly distributed) and it trickles-down-to-the-small-guy.
The world is a system where you participate no-matter-what. Everyone does. And it is assured that by next year, the average citizen will be poorer compared to the Elite due to the wealth-consolidation trend.
Steem is a system where you join to participate (if you so want). As you do so, you start with 0 and can only improve your position and go upwards. One could argue that the world is a dis-empowering system for the average person while steem is an empowering system.
You started with zero. You didn't invest anything. However you are now 3-4k richer and have more steem power to exercise your voting and curation. This doesn't happen in the world. Even doing nothing will harm you financially due to cost of living and sustaining yourself.
Your argument makes sense to someone who has no capital to risk. Those who invest their effort, time, expertise, and monetary capital, have to choose the winning horse amongst competitors. The highly skewed distribution of Steem is an uncompetitive attribute w.r.t. to competitors which correct it. For example, I argue the vested interests prevent fixing the major insoluble flaws.
Yes, I'm talking about non-investors.
If we analyze the investor crowd then those who invest their capital in something speculative (and dangerous) typically have an excess of capital anyway so the arrow of wealth transfer is from the rich to the poor (bloggers, photographers, etc). Even if steem somehow goes to zero, at worst some rich people who invested will have paid a lot of poor people for their content plus some whales for their development, mining or witness involvement.
Serious bloggers are investors of their talent, effort, and opportunity cost capital.