Steemit is a fine platform with a huge problem, inequality.

At the heart of the decentralized movement lies what probably is the more important of its founding pillars, the re-distribution of power to make the world a better place.

Bearing the above in mind, Steemit, which allows for the democratization of content with the in-built option of rewarding users, is perfectly fit to join the 21st century and its decentralization, in a way in which it takes power away from advertisers and publishers to distribute both; the capacity to publish/broadcast and the ability to generate revenue, directly to the creator, away from publishing rights that have been inherited from a completely different world that no longer exists, where composers would run around Viena with their scores under their arms trying to convince Wiener-Urtext and the like to publish their music, or writers would go looking for owners of printing presses from which to distribute their work and make money out of them.

So, Steemit fulfills that promise embedded in decentralization which is to be re-distributed. However, in spite of this goal being fulfilled in what regards to the outside world, it has created a flawed ecosystem where power is even more centralized than in the analog world I mentioned before.

At present, the bulk majority of SteemPower is held in the hands of very few. Even though there are in excess of 70.000 users, approximately 80% of all Steem Power is held in the hands of some 250. What this creates is a much higher concentration of power/interest than in the real world. And this is a self-fulfilling system, whereby the more Steem Power you hold the easier it is to bias the re-distribution of "wealth" or power, which will naturally tend to go to those who are closer to you, those you're familiar with, or those who have managed to create a bond with you, Steem-Powerful one, thus even further concentrating such power. In the real world this is called an oligarchy, which is light years away from decentralizing or diluting power.

This happens because the distribution of power is linear, when I think it should look like a Gauss bell. If we assume this thesis as worthy of exploration, we would then need to define what parameters such distribution should take into account.

In light of the above, what should be taken into account when distributing power or SteemPower?

When dealing with power in anthropology, one usually tends to describe how individuals are grouped together. This implies thinking about; (a)their bonds; family, friends, fraternities, secret societies, etc, (b) ascribed status; gender, race, creed, etc, (c) achieved status; education, income, etc, and (d) power itself.

If we were to find a parallelism between the traditional anthropologic groupings and Steemit, one could think about how individuals group together (a) following/followers or the rate of voting to a same individual from a specific user (b) whether a user usually votes or writes for a specific area of interest (life, Steemit, photography, etc) in a specific language (ru, cn, etc) (c) would be the reputation score each user has and (d) would be SteemPower itself.

If we were to re-distribute power within the Steemit ecosystem, any "overload" of posting, voting or curating for a specific category or individuals (group of individuals) would imply a re-adjustment of their true power, this is, the Steem Power "harvested" for such voting activity. In this way, if an individual were to only vote for another individual or a closely knit group of individuals, then he'd be effectively creating an oligarchic "hub" whereby such power is encapsulated. This would be true when applied to any of the categories or groups specified previously.

If for instance someone were to vote only for posts in Spanish, then he'd be fostering the adoption of Spanish in Steemit, but he'd be supporting the creation of an interest hub. If a user's activity is distributed amongst a wider universe of interests and/or individuals, then his value would come from supporting Steemit as a whole and not just one of those particular groups/hubs we discussed previously. Luckily Steemit only allows for the use of 5 tags, which simplifies things.

In essence, I believe Steemit's power distribution should move closer to a formula that would take into account;

a) the regularity and quantity of posting
b) the quality of posting, in the way of voting
c) the interaction track record between individuals
d) the focus or spread of an individual's interests.

Bearing the above in mind, the objective would be to move from an exponential distribution of SteemPower to a Gauss Bell one. The more one posts high quality content, to more individuals, with a broader base of individuals voting for a post, to a wider number of interests/tags, the more SteemPower, for he'd be supporting Steemit as a whole. The more concentrated his production/voting in a specific category or for specific individuals the less his voting power int hat context.

Having said the above, I do believe Steemit is a very interesting experiment I'm willing to support in the long run, but it needs fine tuning, the relationship between illusion/motivation from users who join the system is the principal asset of Steemit. The more concentrated the power the faster that asset is degraded over time and the stronger the user discouragement, thus the smaller the chances of the platform survival in the long run.

I'd love to hear you opinions on the above.