On Steemit Whales so called “Raping of the Reward Pool”… Is Steemit Broken? Why I don’t think so…

I’ve been on Steemit for nearly four months now and would consider myself successful. I say that in comparison to my own past though compared to the amount of work I had to put in to get my software business going more than 20 years ago. It took more than 10 years and over a million lines of code to get to the point where it was able to support me full time. Now I see people able to do that within a few months, sometimes even days because of Steemit. We should be glad that this is the case.

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I’ve been following the debate between @berniesanders and @haejin only somewhat loosely so I may not be aware of all the details of how this got started. I do have a business to run and don’t have enough time to pay attention to all the drama. But I do have a few things to say about the nature of some of the arguments out there.

First, I used to be a supporter of Bernie Sanders. I say “used to be” because I knew neither Hillary or Trump would “fix the system”. I now believe that Sanders could not have done so either for reasons that should become clear below. I have no idea who @berniesanders is in real life. I can only say that many of the arguments over this come from an ego perspective that doesn’t follow natural law. Is it desirable that everyone have at least a minimum to survive? Of course it is. How we get there though is even more important. Using violence and coercion whether it involves a badge or not is never OK.

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Some people may be confused by the “vote” and that such artificial constructs make what government does OK. It doesn’t. Even the judiciary has said that only by the consent of the governed does power have any chance of achieving “legitimacy”. However, when artificial law goes against natural law, natural law is in the right every time. It’s also the case that very few people of the world can ever say that they “consented” to governance. The vast majority are held at gunpoint to “democracy”.

When we were born into this world, there were practically no guarantees, except death. This is where the argument should start, from this place that nothing is owed. All the rest of nature follows this rule except humanity because humans appear to be the only species on this planet that lacks self governance. While it’s unfortunate that we live in a world that seems so cruel, it isn’t without purpose. Anesthetize yourself against this with state guaranteed comfort and you will not grow. Furthermore, you will gradually become less sensitive to the imbalances when they do occur and eventually you will lose your will to survive.

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Value is a very subjective issue, and it appears also one that involves ego. When we say that @haejin’s posts aren’t worth ____, we are imposing our own standards and will upon others which is a morally and ethically violent stance to hold. Some have called his posts spam. Technically this is not even correct. He has every right to post what he wants on his own page. Has anyone forced you to follow?

Also, the idea that someone is taking up a certain percentage of the reward pool shows a mentality of fear and limitation. The “reward pool” isn’t a fixed size where if someone gets more of it, everyone else gets less, unless you consent to an idea of limitation. Judging from the fact that @haejin now has more than 12k followers, I’d say that he was given consent.

I understand that there are some here writing great material who have reputations well below 50. I spent many years writing for no pay whatsoever and even allowing Facebook to sell my work to corporate power. Keep at it and eventually you will arrive where you were meant to. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be successful by a worldly definition, but by where you’re meant to be in spirit. @haejin’s path is not your path. Why define yourself a “failure” if you don’t match his numbers? Believe it or not, “failure” is also a valid destination, that has no intrinsic value judgement.

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Comparisons between people are a mental poison that distorts your understanding of the path that you were meant to be on in life. It presupposes that you’re on the same track in some kind of “rat race” and that there “can be only one”. But just as fortune grants excess to vary your paths, it sometimes needs to create lack at least temporarily to bring something more important.

I’m sure that some of you will think I say these things only because I’m now successful. I’m very far from being a “crypto millionaire”. I’m one minor medical crisis from being completely wiped out. I’m a diabetic and have afib. But I don’t want handouts. I don’t want to be in a forced medical system controlled by a state bent on violence and coercion. If someone has to steal from someone else so that I can live, I consider that morally unacceptable. It is not your problem that I have these issues. Furthermore, if it’s my time to go, I don’t want the medical system detaining me.

(Mt Charleston, NV, July 2009)

What I’ve learned now going into my golden years is that these trials, all of them, were necessary. I spent the last few years out in the desert homeless after the financial crisis of 2008 in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy after writing software that sparked massive IT disruption. I had to do so anyway in 2010, but what I learned is that money really doesn’t have a direct correlation to happiness. I was the happiest I had ever been out in the Nevada desert those few short years even though I had little more than a truck, solar panel, and laptop. Twenty years before that I had all the creature comforts of a “civilized life” and was miserable.

(Vidal Junction area, CA, Dec 2009)

More importantly, division within the Steemit community is short sighted. The reward pool isn’t just on Steemit, it’s the whole world. While calls toward more balance are honorable, the way of going about it is incorrect. We should all work toward making sure that everyone else has a chance for @haejin’s success. Instead of trying to bring him down to your level, you should work toward bringing everyone else up to his level. His success doesn’t hurt your chances for success. On the contrary, it enhances your chances for success because the more people who reach that level, the more whales there will be to lift new users out of poverty. Those whales are our engines to freedom against a centralized banking system that wants to use your lack as a means of control…

(credit - Andreas Antonopoulos)

The Steem blockchain has the best potential for doing this. Facebook, Twitter and other social media are the past of a centralized corrupt system.

Steemit is doing what it’s supposed to do. Nothing in this world is perfect, and it’s a good thing that it isn’t, or everyone would arrive at the same destination.

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