I'm still fairly new to Steem[It] myself, and not entirely sure how the silly thing works. :-) However, I did just get a brain-dump crash course from @lukestokes last week on the whole SteemPower mechanism, the voting, Witnesses, etc.
And I gotta say, for all the blockchain egalitarian anarchy talk it's remarkable how it seems designed to create a win-more scenario, just like meat-space economics.
The more Steem you get, the more Steem Power you're able to get. The more Steem Power, the more you can control the conversation. Most people can't read all posts to see what's valuable to them (obviously), and that will only get worse over time (obviously), so that makes such "high-value moderators" all the more powerful. That creates a feedback loop just as effectively as it does in traditional economics, even if everyone is acting in good faith. The echo chamber is built in.
And with rewards going to those that are popular and noticed, that only serves to encourage the echo chamber even more. The more you have the more you can spend, the more you can spend the more you are able to get. Just by creating friend circles and upvoting things that you agree with (which, again, normal humans will do even when acting in the best of intentions) it creates an echo chamber.
And then, of course, the payout for Witnesses is far beyond what "mere" content creators get. So even there we have a clear stratification. From the charts you have above it's clear it's already happened/happening.
I don't think it's avoidable, really. The win-more intrinsic in almost any social or economic structure unless there are active efforts and structures and rules in place to counter-act it, and those always get opposed by those who would be most restrained by them and by those that would like to think they'll be in a position to be restrained by them later.
We'll see if SteemIt manages to avoid the fate of every other economic structure in history. So far it doesn't look like it, but the night is young...
Maybe you're right.
What I don't like about it is that some people say that it's never been their intention. Like: "We didn't make it, so let's say it's never been our aim."
I can't speak for the Steem devs, but it may well have not been their intention or aim to create yet another win-more economy. That could be a very honest statement. That doesn't mean they haven't created one anyway, inadvertently, and now we need to figure out what to do with it.
(Just as I'm sure Jack Dorsey didn't intend to create the greatest harassment tool ever envisioned, but he did, and now we need to figure out what to do with it.)