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RE: Steem and Writing – Another Lane on the Highway to Hell?
Maybe. One thing that I'm hoping will keep the balance is the use of micro payments. Upvotes here aren't exactly micropayments..but a similar idea. It's never been economical to give someone a penny over the internet. That has given the rich and powerful an advantage as they can move money around while a bunch of small players can't make a dent. Now that every upvote carries at least some benefit things may eventually balance out. Right now the skew is large. If the market cap went up 100 fold, the whales would no longer make up such a huge percentage of the total. I could be wrong about that..but I think with an increasing market cap and an increasing user base a little bit more balance will occur.
According to my reading of the Steem White Paper, one of the issues this is designed to address is what the WP says bluntly on page 25: 'Micropayments Dont' work.' While I think you're right that increasing market cap will diminish the obvious inequity of the Whales vs Everyone Else situation right now, what it won't do is address the overall power imbalance that I increasingly feel the blockchain favours. As market cap grows, the value of small holdings will dwindle towards nothing, while large holdings will grow in absolute terms even as they shrink in percentage terms. The real issue for me is this appropriation of surplus value by big players - be they founders, early adopters or simple investors who have bought their positions directly (in a straight cash-for-influence/power swap that could hardly be more nakedly 'capitalist'). It's very clever and it's probably going to make a few people rich.