I'm not giving up on the reward pool just yet. I'm still skeptical that a decentralized, monetized social network has any lasting appeal, but I'm not ready to dismiss it entirely having just seen one extremely flawed implementation of it. I still remember your post about your late girlfriend at the very top of Trending. It was definitely a case of "worthwhile content getting the attention it deserves". (Apologies if that recall was inappropriate.) I can think of many, many such examples from the past. There's potential, it just needs radical bug fixing.

About the failure of capitalism and freedom - I had written a post about this very subject several months ago. I used to be pretty open to differing political ideologies. I understood the benefits and pitfalls of capitalism, socialism; liberty, equality and everything in between. Unlike you, I didn't subscribe to an ideology, largely because they were all pretty flawed. However, Steem has been pretty definitive evidence that anarcho-capitalism is fresh hell. Good thing it's all a small, virtual experiment. (Actually, I take that back, I know there have been death threats and the like.)

Here's how I'll put it - if you believe in freedom, absolute libertarian models are at odds with freedom itself. That may sound like nonsense, but hear me out. You need to separate freedom and libertarianism. Absolute libertarian ideologies empowers the criminals, scumbags and lowlifes of the world. Think of it this way - they are encouraged to abuse others' freedoms. If you believe in freedom, I would suggest accepting good governance as the tool to protect people's freedom from the absolute worst in society, as you put it. That should be their only role. There's a bloody good reason governments exist in the civilized world - to keep the uncivilized in check. While governments are flawed - we all know that - it's sure as hell a lot better than criminals, despots or the underworld swooping in to fill the power vaccuum. Instead, what I would suggest is - don't give up on governments, but consider making better governments. The only solution to bad governance is good governance.

I have gotten a lot of hate in the past for suggesting the above, from Steemians, but I'll stand by it till people wake up and accept the reality. To be very clear, we are still talking about a free society, but one with checks in place to protect freedom and liberty.

Of course, if there were a species that's not comprised of selfish egomaniacs, and people were truly compassionate, I'd embrace absolute liberty in a heartbeat. Homo sapiens are not that species.

On a related note, I would totally like to see distributed judiciaries on Steem.