The Peter Principle, Ortega y Gasset and the Self-Determination of Steemit

New to steemit, I decided to watch and learn and I have this to make of it – ‘upside down’.

The Peter Principle is a special case of an ubiquitous observation: Anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails.

The Peter Principle is a concept in management theory formulated by Laurence J. Peter and published in 1969. It states that the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate's performance in their current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role. Thus, employees only stop being promoted once they can no longer perform effectively, and "managers rise to the level of their incompetence."

José Ortega y Gasset:
"All public employees should be demoted to their immediately lower level, as they have been promoted until turning incompetent".

Ortega y Gasset died in 1955, about 14 years before Peter published The Peter Principle. His works embodied another more complex question about the “meaning of life” and our freedoms.

Ortega y Gasset wrote that life is at the same time fate and freedom, and that freedom: "is being free inside of a given fate. Fate gives us an inexorable repertory of determinate possibilities, that is, it gives us different destinies. We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny."

In this tied down fate we must therefore be active, decide and create a "project of life"—thus not be like those who live a conventional life of customs and given structures who prefer an unconcerned and imperturbable life because they are afraid of the duty of choosing a project.

Turning to steemit.com, the Power Struggle has become an unhealthy and messy display being played out upon the platform.

The ‘whales’ determine the rewards structure and the whales have to look at their results. The results include:

1. The price of steem.

2. The number of subscriptions.

3. The rate of retention.

4. The rate of decentralisation.

5. The ‘feel-good factor’.

6. Steem has gone from a high Market Capitalisation of $380million down to $26million, losing 93% between July 2016 and February 2017.

7. The number of subscriptions is stated as being over 130,000. The system itself only follows 61,873 and there are about 3-6,000 active accounts, of which it cannot be known how many are multiple accounts in one owner’s hands and how many are in fact robots set up to profit via systematic algorithmic processes.

8. Retention figures are hard to know as there are so many accounts which appear bogus. A lot of actual ‘people’ have left because of how the rewards structure treated them.

9. The rate of decentralisation is zero.

10. Frustration and anger is at all levels of the structure.

The first steem was at basement prices. Mining brought massive instant rewards.

The purchase and mining of steem has put these people known as ‘whales’ into a position of management.

The Peter’s Principle would suggest that they are in a position which displays their incompetence.

Ortega y Gasset would suggest that they are unwilling or incapable of seeing that: “We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny”.

If the top 4% of an organisation is receiving 98% of the rewards for 4% of its output, then the system is ‘upside down’. I hope it changes.