I am not a big fan of the 1% that owns most of the HIVE and used to own most of the STEEM on a similar blockchain based social media site. The 1% includes people who built the platform and who have invested a great deal of their personal resources and time to the platform; so I bear with them.
While I do not seek the company of whales. I realize that, ultimately, the whales desire to buy influence is the only thing that provides value to the STEEM I was greedily accumulating in my account.
So, the topic of this post is Eating the Rich.
A primary theme of the radical left for the last couple decades has been a campaign that vilifies the 1% with the stated aim of seizing the assets of the 1%. If we only seized the assets of the upper class; then we could have socialist utopia!
While I dislike the wealth gap in society at large, I do not see seizing the assets as a solution.
I admit, I really dislike the real life Bernie Sanders. Sander's solution in life is to form mobs that kick people down and seize their assets so that he can redistribute it to the mob.
I feel for the fake Bernie Sanders on Steemit that got kicked down.
If seizing assets isn't the solution; then what is the solution?
Rather than making rich people poorer. I believe that the solution is to find ways to make poor people richer.
The first step is to create structures that help the poor get richer and to create alternatives to structures like the Federal Reserve, the IRS and Wall Street that were designed to give the powerful artificial influence in the economy at large.
Sadly, neither SteemIt nor HIVE is such a structure. SteemIt created a ruling class of whales and failed to provide the structures needed to build a good middle class on the platform.
Since SteemIt was designed by whales for the benefit of whales, the platform was open to capture.
Justin Sun's take over is a classic example of capture.
The progressive left has perfected the method of capture. A group infiltrates a community and starts grabbing a few key positions in the community.
A strong armed leader moves in and finalizes the capture by driving anyone who might challenge the community out of the system. Those who remain are left living in fear that they will be the next group hardforked out of the community.
ustin Sun is but one in a long line of such strong arm leaders exploiting the progressive tactic of capture
In the latest move, Sun hoped to employ wealth envy to justify a seizure of assets from the upper middle class on SteemIt. All of us minions are supposed to acquiesce and wave or support while fearing that our little treasure trove on SteemIt might be next in line for seizure.
The game is destructive. It is not a good path forward. The solution isn't to seize assets to make the rich poor, but to find ways to make the poor richer.
The image is from a book by PJ O'Rourke published in 1998. Here is an Amazon affiliate link to cite the source of the image.
There will always be a wealth gap. The 80/20 rule plays a huge role even when there is no political plunder involved. However, there is still room to discuss things like HIVE payout percentages.
I was a relatively early adopter of STEEM, but I missed out on the first big boom. I don't begrudge those who have more, so long as they don't stomp on actual content creators.
My post is against the politics of wealth envy.
The seizure of assets on SteemIt is precisely what many loud voices have advocated through the decades.
Loud voices promote wealth envy. A strong armed leader like Justin Sun steps in and seizes the assets of the middle class.
The wealth seizure reduces the wealth of the community at large and the gap between the people and the strong arm leader is even larger than before the seizure.
The politics of wealth envy leads societies to ruin.
A society needs to watch for things that lead to excessive concentrations of wealth. The Federal Reserve, Wall Street and the insurance industry routinely engage in actions that undermine society.
Justin Sun's seizure of assets is an example of a negative action.
Calling out negative behavior is different from wealth envy.
Agreed entirely. @berniesanders and the old STEEM witness roster was trying to build a better community despite the roadblock of Steemit Inc. We can debate how effective their efforts were, and point out mistakes they made, but they weren't generally abusive. It wasn't the quantity of STEEM held that created the problem, it was centralization. Justin Sun doubled down on centralization and used his stake purely for coercion.
There will always be a "1%." The quantity they hold may vary over time, but the only key question is how their wealth was acquired. Was it productivity, or plunder? Sun is clearly on the side of theft and censorship. He favors the political means, not community and productivity. And that, not just the size of his holdings, made him the threat.
That is a great way to describe the divide. Was the wealth created by productivity or plunder?
The one percent is not the only group that engages in plunder. There are people at all levels who seek plunder. There are thousands of plankton accounts with a single focus of getting free money from Hive without giving thought on how to benefit the community.
Quite frankly, I think people motivated by wealth envy are engaged in the politics of plunder.
The hope is that strong armed leaders will redistribute some of the plunder in their direction.
Yes. Politics is promising some crumbs from the plundering process to different people in order to buy their support and compliance.