"Do you recognise its existence as a possible threat to the future of steem as a result of perceived influence or the potential for conflicts of interest between Steemit.inc shareholders and the Steem community?"

Thank you for asking this, it's quite related to my concern. Many conflicts of interest need to be addressed, both by @ned and by the whale and witness community who have, to a large extent, expressed an attitude of "who cares if under the surface this place becomes a cesspool for meaningless SEO type content and corporate accounts, my steem will be worth millions".

I see a clear conflict of interests between content creators and investors at steemit.com as long as investments in steem are deeply tied to influence (sp) as a content contributor/curator. It's very lucrative for investors because they have two ways to profit from investing in steem, the rising price of steem (same as any investment), but also from their activity at steem which will have much more weight than someone who doesn't have the monetary resources to buy in (hi!). Because money is much more reliable in attracting money than good content is, eventually a vast majority of steem power will belong to the biggest investors and a few early users with only a tiny fraction belonging to content creators. We are talking massive wealth and power inequality, very similar or even worse to what's happening in the world economy now. The only positive aspect of this economic disparity is that people have the option to rely on their regular jobs and treat this as bonus income, a luxury which will become increasingly rare as all this new AI continues to replace jobs.

I understand that STEEM is what allows us to cash out our earnings at steemit, but there should be some kind of regulations that could be put in place which curb the amount of power that investors will have at the platform and keep the place a healthy environment for us regular users who don't have much to invest.

The few people who understand this trend seem to think it's just inevitable and Isn't worth fighting, which basically makes me feel like I should just jump on the "fuck it, my steem will be worth more" train and take my hopes for a thriving online community of substance somewhere else when the time comes. I know many content creators feel the same.

I hope I am able to find more people who share my concerns, people who understand crypto and investment, maybe even the history of world economics better than I do because I know I'm not the best at expressing all this.

I hope the overall goal of steemit is greater than just becoming a profitable business because it has the potential to fix a lot that is broken. If these concerns are addressed, it could fix a large chunk of economic disparity in the world and shift power back to regular people... if not, it will just be more of the same, a few individuals profit and everyone else is kind of just fucked. I won't judge, but it'll be a colossal waste of an amazing opportunity.