I feel torn at the moment. I hate fence-sitting and am normally decisive, probably a little too decisive sometimes, usually seeing things as black and white, but this is a very different situation.........
So why did I come to Steem and now Hive....
I came here in a roundabout way via @mannacurrency. I have long been a huge fan of micro-finance and its ability to empower people in the less affluent countries of the world. A system of universal basic income has always been a dream of mine. Not as a complete salary replacement scheme, but as foot-up, a helping hand to give people the impetus to take responsibility for themselves, helped on by the generosity of a system that rewarded hard-work and sincerity but at the same time provided a safety net for those less fortunate for which to at least keep them from starving to death.
I am also a huge fan of the internet and social media as a form of creating a discourse between people from different backgrounds such as geographical locations, religion, socio-economic standing and culture. I truly believe that through conversation, consensus can be achieved that can lead to peaceful co-existence and inter-dependency. This is NOT some utopian pipe-dream. Most of the world's trade is carried out through a similar background albeit sometimes on unfavourable terms for one party or the other but none of the aforementioned cultural traits has stopped the US trading with Pakistan or China trading with France for example but any one country on its own would find it hellishly difficult to exist without such inter-dependency. We can look to North Korea for example and who would want to live there?
Peace and harmony can exist, they just need mutual understanding, acceptance and tolerance.
In the first few years of this century, I was a member of friendfinders.com, a social network that combined Instant messaging, live chat rooms based on geography and interest and blogging where I met some amazing lifelong friends, many of whom I met in real life at our many organised meet-ups all over the world or by personally getting together. Most of this group of about 30 are still in touch via FB and messenger almost 20 years later. We have shared births, deaths and marriages together and as a group cover six continents, every level of affluence from broke to millionaire, every form of sexual preference and religious background as well as age group. In fact, the only thing we all share in common is we are all getting older!
As a side note. FriendFinder was in some ways a forerunner to dating sites. Most of us didn't use it as such but it was bought out by Penthouse in 2005 and from then on went to shit as it spawned hundreds of different versions of itself such as adultfriendfiner, russianfriendfinder, christianfriendfinder etc.....they missed the point that the thing that made it so successful in the first place was the fact all these people from vastly differing backgrounds were thrown in the same 'lobby' together and had to sort themselves out!
Previous to Friendfinder, I'd been on yahoochat and ICQ, I was learning about so much by talking to people I would never have thought it possible to ever be able to have a conversation with and to some extent, although not creating my own personal structure of belief and personal philosophy, certainly honed it and smoothed out the edges.
This is what I thought Steem could be......
The interaction between people. Learning and creating relationships. The chance to make a difference, to empower the unempowered and the ability to use blockchain technology on a more practical level to help even out the world's alarming financial disparity by removing the parasitic middlemen from the transaction and thus allowing more of the original amount to arrive safely at its intended recipient.
So why am I torn?....
Because people I like and/or respect are always genuine people, regardless of their belief, culture or philosophy and here on Steem and Hive we appear to have some very polarised viewpoints and judgements upon systems of governance based upon personal opinion and do not seem to take into account a greater world view and the wonderful diversity of people we have here on these two blockchains. This diversity should be a huge positive, instead, it's used a rod to beat people.
So without getting into politics......
.....on Steem right now, I like the fact that there is now more opportunity for the less creative people to earn more rewards from sincerity and hard work as opposed to purely talent. I like the fact there is strangely less governance as most of the biggest and most influential stakeholders have gone to hive and I think that this will work in their favour as better balance gives better results. I still think that Justin Sun is a total imbecile who is interested in nothing more than profit and I still hope he loses millions.
The other thing on Steem is there are still a lot of people I like and respect there who to be fair, are possibly putting personal financial gain over community cooperation and more altruistic motives but each one of us has our own financial narrative and we don't know other people's so none of us has a right to judge without knowing the facts...
.......which brings me onto Hive....
On hive, we have a very different demographic. Back to the founding principles of Anarcho-Capitalism, Libertarianism and Voluntaryism. Many from first-world countries, not short of a bob or two, very intelligent and producing excellent, top quality 'content'. Like on Steem, and even more importantly for me, some really nice people, albeit totally polarised in their opinions.
Hush up and join the dark side.