RE: Steemit As Direct Projection of Delusion of "American Dream"
It sounds exactly like wealthy elite in power...
Sounds similar but there is one crucial difference: the responsibility factor.
In "real" world power comes without much responsibility - e.g. you can trigger a war and reap the benefits without bearing the consequences.
Whereas in Steem power is combined with taking responsibility. The more power you have, the more you lose when things go wrong. If you start acting selfishly, in the long run, you have much more to lose than acting for the benefit of the whole system.
That's why we start to see behaviors like this. Try to put yourself in the whales' shoes. Steem's incentive structure makes them need to address the very problems that you raise, as otherwise they will be the biggest losers.
We cannot remove unfairness. The world is pretty unfair and has always been like that. But what we can do is attach responsibility to power. And for me this is what Steem is all about.
There is no responsibility if you are in whale fellowship of mutual admiration.
I have not heard about a single whale being punished, lost their power and forced to leave.
Maybe some got a bit of slap once for their greed (just like bankster elite does) but then they go back to their greed.
Just, becasue we have created cultures which have been unfair and rewarded and conditioned unfair behaviour, does not mean that we still have to be stuck in this obsolete social concepts and this way of thinking. It is time to start thinking out of the box.
If they behave as you imply (I don't know anything about it), they will be punished quite severely - their Steem shares will lose value. It's hard to imagine a more appropriate punishment.
What would you suggest instead? Some sort of committee trusted to make fair choices?
If such a committee does not have skin in the game, sooner or later it will start abusing its power - we know this for sure, that's the human nature.
If it does have skin in the game (by owning Steem shares) - we end up with what we have now: whales having decisive upvote power.
Steem is not perfect and it's not meant to be 100% fair. But it's the best incentive structure we can come up with, at least on this planet.
If you really have some out-of-the-box ideas which can improve Steem, that's a perfect topic for a post.