A fantastic post @dwinblood. I have been here for about six weeks now and in that time I have left due to my skeptical distrust of the set up of the platform and returned with the belief that I could do my bit to help make steemit what most of us would like it to be. My knowledge of the platform and how blockchains and crypto works is very limited so perhaps I should not be commenting from a place of ignorance but I believe in fair play and think this is an issue that needs addressing in the current set up of steemit. I understand that building steem power allows all of us the opportunity to have some kind of influence on the site and perhaps this is a good thing but I see too much power in the hands of too few here and whether used for benevolent or malevolent purposes power and influence are still very strong corrupters. We all have a vested interest in steemit becoming financially successful but as you say we all have the responsibility of making steemit the community we want it to be but within any community there will always be those who wish to control the rest.
Perhaps we could set up a steemit council which could consist of representatives from all three different hierarchical groups we have here on steemit. Three minnows, three dolphins and three whales with each representative being selected randomly and serving the community as part of the council for a set limited period. 1 month for example and then the process of selecting new representatives for the following month begins. Perhaps this is a terrible idea. I can accept that if others can explain to me why but the point is we need to start deciding ourselves what our steemit community stands for rather than having this decided by those who have influence only due to their financial investment in the platform or just because they were fortunate enough to be here at the beginning or even because they were the ones who created the platform. I am very thankful to those men and women and have a lot of respect for what has been achieved but if those who created, built up or invested the site have more power and influence over the community then what we have is a virtual representation of the real world society and its problems which we are all supposedly trying to move away from.
I see this platform as having an amazing opportunity to impact the world in a positive way and that is hopefully what we all want but I also see that it has the potential to be a negative in our world and lives unless we take it upon ourselves to protect it from such abuse.
Thanks again for a very thoughtful and interesting post!
Hope your day is going well!