I saw this video on John Stossels Facebook site and wanted to bring it here:

In short: He discusses the fallacy of the fixed pie that symbolizes the income of everyone combined. It assumes that rich people taking a big piece of the pie and thus take it away from the poor. In the economy this can easily be debunked, because the rich people actually produce value in exchange for the pie and thus not just take a bigger slice, but increase the size of the pie.

Steemit-pie

So does that work the same in Steemit? For this we have to see where the money comes from or rather the value of it.

The amount of STEEM distributed over all the articles is fixed and given out according to the voting power assorted to an article. Steemit does this in an exponential manner, thus an article 10 times as popular as another recieves 100 times the value.

The cake that is steem is definitly 1. fixed 2. taken away from the poor to be given to the rich

This "wage gap" is also increased by the interest on STEEM POWER. 

Is it so easy to predict that Steemit will digg its own grave?

Not really of course. I experience, as will probably be the same with a lot others, that my account balance inceases from day to day. Even a few days without posting (or not earning), leave me with a higher account evaluation. But where does this come from?

As the amount of distributed STEEM is fixed, the value of it isn't. And as we have seen the last weeks, the value of STEEM is on a steady rise. 

It can definitly be said, that the steemit-cake is growing. Thus debunking the pie myth again.

Time to jump to Conclusions

We now got these two facts:

1. STEEM amount that is distributed over the articles is fixed.
2. STEEM value is subjective, and currently rising.

which lead me to the following questions I can't not yet answer:

1. Is it really the value produced by whales that increases STEEM value? 
2. What value is produced by whales?
3. Current dicussions seem to be concious about the lack of quality that is backed by upvoting.
4. If the value created is mainly in increasing eyeball on the site through more tits and fun, is this content enough to hold the value of STEEM up in the future?
5. Or do whales only have a small share of effective contribution?
6. Can this this trend go on, or is it rather an inflated price, backed by hot air?
7. What is to be lost here? 
8. Is there a danger, that STEEM is artifically inflated, to allow whales to quickly get their fortune out and then retire on the money?

This are all questions that should be found out because we are all sitting in this together. And even thought the entry to Steemit is free, there is still time put into this site to produce value. This means we all have skin in the game and a reason to keep discussing.

Closing

While there are a lot of things that can be improved, I apploud the discussion culture that is growing strong on steemit. Even thought that most complaints seem superficial, they can be traced back to a big error.

In quality control, the strategy is to ask five time why to get to the source of  problem:

1. Why are you unhappy? I don't get so much money from posting.
2. Why do you get so few money from posting? Because others get so much.
3. Why do others get so much? Because they are on the trending list.
4. Why are they on the trending list? Because they where upvoted by whales
5. Why is this a bad thing? Because it leads to a lot of other peope upvoting them, instead of other stuff.

This being only an example of problem finding, it is actually the reason why I wront this explanation about how early voting actually works and why there is nothing to earn by voting on high earning posts.

So keep complaining, even superficial. Go into discussions and have some idea-sex. 

Would be a shame if there wasn't some insight coming out of all of this.