While no one has yet been willing to really challenge my point that we have a problem in terms of new membership distribution, many are willing to call me a racist for merely pointing out a fact. For the life of me, I don't know how discussing that we have a preponderance of new membership from certain countries makes me a racist-- especially when I have several close minority friends and have no racist inklings in my entire body or soul. But they seem to equate noticing that these countries are in poorer sections of the world with a "hate crime," or something.

Not that the poverty element is that important, really. I would be nearly as concerned if five richer countries were so vastly over-represented among our new memberships, although that would dent the likelihood that the real racists inside the beltway and many corporate boardrooms (where decisions are made about things like finance capital, major banking/wealth-creating ventures, what startups are worth supporting and/or commenting upon favorably, etc.)..i.e. many people who have already calling Steemit a "scam," etc.,...would be as likely to do so.

It's getting so bad in here now, that people are trying to tell me that Nigeria is not (fairly or unfairly) known as a haven for scammers, and that the countries I have called "poor" aren't really poor but rich. They are attacking my minor premise because they have no argument against my major premise. In other words, because anybody can go to the "introduceyourself" tag and see for themselves that I am telling the truth about my major premise (dominant distribution from a few places) they will instead attack my minor premise (that these places happen to be among the poorest in the world.)

While it is true that Venezuela has the potential to be a rich nation, the Communist policies there have made for a hyper inflation that has impoverished all but the very top percentages of people in the government. Venezuela currently ranks 125th in per capita income, but that study is a bit dated, and the distribution of wealth is so heavily skewed against the majority of the people, that they are probably as poor in purchasing power as the poorest nations on Earth.

(source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html)

Indonesia ranks one spot ahead of Venezuela (#124) but the poverty by region there is very unevenly distributed. As it turns out, Aceh is 5th poorest among all of Indonesia's provinces with a per capita income of just $2,011, which would rank the province far, far lower, were it a country.

(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indonesian_provinces_by_GRP_per_capita)

The Phillipines come in at #152, Nigeria at #163, and Bangladesh at #176.

Now, rather than shooting the messenger, can we not work together to find out the reasons for this uneven distribution of new members, and work to improve the situation? Steemit is NOT a scam, but any casual observer who hasn't been here and seen what this platform is capable of would be supported in the worldwide court of public opinion (except for among the worst of the race baiters among us) in saying our current new membership distribution looks like we are preying on the poor in some sort of "get-rich-quick" scheme. NOT TRUE, I know. But we aren't the ones who have to be convinced of Steemit's potential, and we aren't the ones making influential judgment calls about the various cryptocurreny options and talking to potential investors on a regular basis.