I will be focusing on Steemit.com as the main platform for the Steem blockchain for simplicity, since it was the first and is still the largest point-of-contact for interaction in the blockchain. Looking at Steemit.com, the site itself and what happens there as an imaginary "company", will be used to try to understand how Steemit.com work as an organization and community.
This is the current idea about how Steemit functions is: "The platform of Steemit.com/Steem is like a business. I have a stake, just like a share in a company. That means I have a vote for each share, and if I have more votes than you it means I have more power because I have more shares. That's the way Steem/Steemit was designed, that's the 'law', deal with it."
Does a company create more stock every day and give it out people who create the content, those who create the product or service that is put out through the company for others to consume? No, not usually with shares, but they do pay people to work to produce those products or services. It's just not with shares usually. Steemit.com pays for work done with shares. The workers who create the content products are the "employees", and the employee workers evaluate each other (curating). For Steemit.com, consider all users who contribute posts or comments as providing work. They are the community that create the content and give it life. They are the people who actually use the site, not simply viewers or bot-curators.
Currently, the employees don't have much power to allocate payment for content products created to give value to Steemit.com. The power to decide who gets most of the pay/rewards for work done, is determined by a concentrated of power in the hands of a group of shareholders. Some of those shareholders think they can do whatever they want because "they have the power" through shares. They only have the concentration of power because that was the original idea that Steemit Inc used to create Steemit.com/Steem. But has this idea panned out? Is the concentration of power to make decisions and decide how things work, really working?
What is Steemit.com Trying To Do?
Steemit.com isn't like a regular "company" where you have to buy-in to get your shares. Steemit gives out shares every day to people who produce products and services to be hosted on Steemit.com in order to give it visibility and reputation that would reflect the products or services being offered, freely in this case. The more that a content or product is created that can't be found elsewhere and has lasting value into the future to attract people to get it on Steemit.com, the more the visibility and reputation grows for people to be attracted to Steemit.com for them to get there, as they can't get it elsewhere. Those who create product content of lasting value into the future give the most opportunity for future influx of viewers and consumers of the content products that are available on Steemit.com (or elsewhere through the blockchain, yes, but as I said I'm sticking to Steemit.com for simplicity in explaining things).
Steemit.com isn't only a company that pays people with shares for producing work on Steemit.com that it uses to gain visibility and reputation. Steemit.com is a community of people that do work and create the content or products and services for that visibility and reputation.
The community is what builds Steemit.com and the blockchain. The community does all the work to build that visibility and reputation to reflect Steemit.com. The developers are the ones that build functionality and also develop more functionality and features in the blockchain that is attractive outside of Steemit.com. If there was only the developers working on the blockchain alone, there would be no Steemit.com and no community of people working to create content to attract more people to that community. The community who work to create content for others to want to access over long periods of time, is what builds the visibility and reputation for Steemit.com, and that reflects as a form of promoting the value of the STEEM token and the blockchain technology itself. The face of Steemit Inc and the Steem blockchain is represented through the visibility of Steemit.com and the content work produced on it.
If the stakeholders want to have all the power to control how things go, and think they cant do whatever they want because they "have the power", then they will alienate the importance and empowerment of the individuals who make up the community and the decision making capacity they have to affect where the direction the community goes. Ignoring the community that creates the products that gives value to the Steemit.com platform will result in Steemit.com failing, not succeeding. Individuals aren't obliged to stay on a platform that is mismanaged by the concentration of power from stakeholders, and they will leave. Why waste time on something that isn't working right? So they leave for greener pastures and more fairness in how things work. The concentration of power is a problem. The real world isn't so easy to simply pick up and leave, as people are coerced into compliance in the chain of obedience of concentrated power and centralized authority that the government wields.
Those who use the site, and those who create the value therein, are the ones who make everything turn. Without the content creators, there is no new content on Steemit.com that has the potential to attract people from the outside. Relying on an flawed model of concentrating power in the hands of stakeholders, does not work when you're trying to establish a community and a desire to stay through being empowered. If you are alienated from the decision process, you are disenfranchising and disillusioned from the platform that isn't really being community driven in how things function. The stakeholders make the choices because they have all the power, and they want to keep it that way. This will not work when people are told about "come for the rewards, stay for the community" if the community of individuals aren't self-determined and self-governing the collective community interdependently. The community isn't empowered when all or a select few of the major stakeholders are running the show.
Management
Steemit.com has a community, with stakeholders and witnesses, and the developers in the Steemit Inc company are developing the site and blockchain.
The management of the way things are done on Steemit.com is decided not by the company Steemit Inc alone. The way things go isn't like a regular company where the bosses make changes and sometimes care to get feedback from employees to change things. If things don't go well, the employees can quit. Some people have left steemit for various reasons, and this can be looked at as an employee quitting.
The Steemit experiment thought the stakeholders could be managers to make decisions that have the majority of concentrated power over the community and decide how things would work in the community and platform of Steemit.com. This has been a failure that some people can recognize.
The Steemit.com community, as a metaphor to a company that pays out shares to people who work to create content products, should be run by employees who do work, not by shareholders. That's not how a regular company is managed. The shareholders don't make the decisions in a company, the management workers do. Workers themselves, the overall employees, can manage an organization as well, just like a cooperative does.
The stakeholders don't run the company, nor should they run the community of workers that create the products. Why would shareholders who have the most power be the ones that run the way the Steemit.com community operates and how things function within it? Shareholders can have their shares apply in various ways, but for the decisions to determine how things operate in the organization and community, that's supposed to be based on competency, not simply on having the concentration of power to decide how things work. Just because corporations work with a flawed model, doesn't mean the community of Steemit.com neesd to work the same way.
Shareholders can decide to sell off a company because all they care about is the $$$ money they will get. Shareholders, new or old, can break up a company or organization and sell it off in parts to make money money. There is no care of concern for the community of individuals that make up the company and work to create it's success. Putting someone's personal self-interest to make money for themselves as they see fit, above the interests of others, like the workers in the organization, is not right, despite it being accepted in society. Money for one or a few who have the power, trumps what is right for everyone involved. People end up losing in the long term because of this lack of inclusion of everyone. If people feel alienated and have no power to affect decisions or change within an organization, that leads to a chain of obedience for those who stick around to do the work and get paid. It doesn't promote the empowerment of self-governance or self-determination.
In a society as community, the community derives consensus on what to do. Steemit.com has a community that uses and creates the product and services as the company that's offering it for free for the internet to consume. The creations in the community are the products that give visibility and reputation for value, in the short or long term.
Do shareholders determine what workers productions should get paid more than other productions in the community of the "company"? Does one or a few shareholders with a concentration of power decide that for themselves? Or does the actual community that evaluates each other decide what products they value the most?
It not up to one or a few power players who have the concentration of power to determine how the community operates. That's up to the community itself. At least, that's the way to empower people to want to be involved. Otherwise, many just don't bother even getting involved because they realize they have no power anyways... it's all concentrated in the hands of a few. This disempowerment doesn't promote individual intrinsic motivations to help the community or organization succeed. People need to have the power to affect change, or they fall into learned helplessness and just accept things the way they are. Decentralization of power in to the hands of the people who make up the organization or community is required for them to determine their own fate together.
The Failure of Concentrated Shareholder Management
From The Peter Principle, Ortega y Gasset and the Self-Determination of Steemit
Turning to steemit.com, the Power Struggle has become an unhealthy and messy display being played out upon the platform.
The ‘whales’ determine the rewards structure and the whales have to look at their results. The results include:
- The price of steem.
- The number of subscriptions.
- The rate of retention.
- The rate of decentralisation.
- The ‘feel-good factor’.
- Steem has gone from a high Market Capitalisation of $380million down to $26million, losing 93% between July 2016 and February 2017.
- The number of subscriptions is stated as being over 130,000. The system itself only follows 61,873 and there are about 3-6,000 active accounts, of which it cannot be known how many are multiple accounts in one owner’s hands and how many are in fact robots set up to profit via systematic algorithmic processes.
- Retention figures are hard to know as there are so many accounts which appear bogus. A lot of actual ‘people’ have left because of how the rewards structure treated them.
- The rate of decentralisation is zero.
- Frustration and anger is at all levels of the structure.
The first steem was at basement prices. Mining brought massive instant rewards.
The purchase and mining of steem has put these people known as ‘whales’ into a position of management.
The Peter’s Principle would suggest that they are in a position which displays their incompetence.
Ortega y Gasset would suggest that they are unwilling or incapable of seeing that: “We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny”.
Self-Determined & Self-Governed Decentralized Community Management
There needs to be a more rational way for the Steemit.com community to operate that isn't based on a concentration of shareholders. A good place to start would be to do it based on how it already works in reality.
The employees in a cooperative community, a cooperative enterprise or organization, are the ones that manage themselves. This is a self-governing and self-determined optimization of individual empowerment to guide the collective community direction. They are equally represented in don't have representatives to represent them incorrectly. Everyone gets information and shares it in order to arrive on the same page of understanding to move forward with the betterment of the community in mind. There is no concentration of wealth. No amount of wealth gives one person more power than the other.
If steemit.com wants to be a bastion of decentralized self-governance and self-determination for the individual, then it really needs to be the community on the ground that the sides where things are going because they are the ones that make up the platform and drive its success through the work they do to create content for the platform. The blockchain or code is one part, and not the determining part of how things operate in a community. The community and the people within it are the ones who can decide how the code will change. The community of employees that work to create the content product are the cooperative of workers that can properly self govern in a decentralized manner as a community to make decisions.
Steemit Inc. makes proposals, witnesses approve them or not, but the community also has a say if the proposals go forward as well, or are reversed as per the effect that these changes have on the platform that the community lives within. The community is the determinant factor for how things will stay or change. If the community is ignored and alienated about their concerns, some will leave and abandon the platform that ignores the issues they raise, and leaves them feeling disenfranchised and disillusioned through being disempowered in the decision making process that can effectuate change.
The community can also propose proposals for change as the workers in the cooperative community. If the workers understand an issue then they can succeed in changing that issue. If community members do not want to get involved, then they depend on others to make decisions for them instead of being active in developing the community. If the overall community believes everything up to witnesses, steemit Inc. or the concentration of power in the hands of the stakeholders, then the community is not in charge of the community is being directed by a select group that decides what happens for everybody.
The concentration of power doesn't work in a community that want something other than what the few power players decide to do simply because they have the power or wealth to do it. Real communities are cooperative. The best communities are self-determined, self-governed and decentralized in power.
A community that follows the chain of obedience of a centralized power structure isn't embodying the "spirit" of what a community can be. It's only a shadow or shall of what it can be.
This is why a cooperative based decision process for how the steemit.com platform and site functions, is optimal in required to propagate greater inclusion of the people, workers, employees that work to create the content product on the platform for others in the world to come and get. That is, if the goal is for self-governance, self-determination and decentralization of power in the community and the societal decision process, and not just the blockchain or staying in the chain of obedience that the code = law.
We are all decentralized individuals who cooperate in the community. At least, that's the optimal ideal functionality of a community which humanity has more or less failed or succeeded in accomplishing at various times and places. It's a long struggle to get consciousness to understand how to maximize individual empowerment within a cooperative community focus.
It's not just about our own self-interest, our own wealth, and trying to maintain and grow our wealth as an individual. Focusing primarily on the money and trying not to lose what we have, is how other more important things are ignored. When we are trying to figure out what the best thing to do is by basing it on money, and not on what is the best thing to do, then we aren't going to be doing the best thing because our focus is on money.
A centralized power as government, or stakeholders, to have more power to do things that others can't, creates an imbalance of power in the decision-making process and also creates injustices in the social cooperative model.
Some people think decentralization is in opposition to what a community is. Again, this is a confusion due to not understanding what these two words mean. Learn the true meaning of words to empower your ability to understand reality. Words reflect reality. THe limits of your understanding words limits your understanding of reality.
A real, true, optimal community, is decentralized! They are not opposites. Using the current model of how society or communities work, is not the optimal understanding of how communities can function taking more information into consideration, such as the importance of respecting individual empowerment and autonomy.
De-Centralized Common-Unity
Prefix de-
Meaning reversal, undoing or removing.
de-
Latin usually meaning "down, off, away, from among, down from,"
centralize
"to bring to a center;"
- To cause something to change from being concentrated at one point to being distributed across a number of points.
- To reduce the authority of a governing body by distributing that authority among several bodies.
De-centralize, is to go away, down or off from a center that would have the concentration of control or power. One database haw the control of information and can manipulate and change that data, but a distributed database like a blockchain prevents this and maintains information integrity. Instead of one person, or one group, having the concentration of power to decide what happens for everyone else, decentralization distributes the power and authority, ideally, among everyone. This is how to empower the individual in self-governance and self-determination to control their own lives.
A community, is a common-unity. If all you care about is your individual self-interest, and are trying to shape the community into your own self-interest because "you have the power", then you're not working as a common-unity. There won't be unity when you use your wealth and power to centralize decisions around yourself alone, while ignoring the common-unity of individuals in the community that doesn't like what you're doing. A community is truly a community when people share a common understanding to form that common-unity based on being on the same page of understanding.
Individuals in a community group together as interdependent units to form a larger whole. If one individual thinks they can decide what does or doesn't happen in a community and acts in that thinking with their power to do whatever they want, this person is not working as part of the common-unity.
Decentralization isn't about an individual being separate from the whole. It's about empowering the individual to be a part of the whole and integrated with how the whole functions. No one is an island to use their power to do whatever they want or "think" is "good". There are others that are affected. This is part of understanding morality. The common-unity is achieved when all individuals are represented equally. There isn't a real "community" when there is a concentration of power to one individual or a group that has power over the rest of the individuals. This is not decentralization, but centralization of power. Individuals can have wealth, but their wealth doesn't determine what is right or wrong in a community or give them more right to control the lives of others.
In a real common-unity community, individuals can't simply use their wealth to go around and control how things work in the community. It's not up to that one person how things in a community really work, it's up to the community to decide. Individuals can work towards common-unity by decentralizing the concentration of power that prevents the community from being able to make decisions fairly and equally. The amount of wealth, money or shares does not determine common-unity, nor what should happen in a community simply based on the whims of one or a few individuals who have the concentration of wealth that they think gives them power over others.
When the power of deciding what goes on in a "community" is centralized, there is less of a common-unity and less of a real true community to do things together based on common understanding. Decentralization of social power is required to empower the individual and truly achieve common-unity.
The ones that are best suited to manage and make decisions in and for a community, are the actual individuals in the community to form common-unity, not a concentration of power in the hands of one, or a few. The wealth someone has should have no impact on the rightness or wrongness of a decision that impacts of affects the community.
A choice needs to be made: repeat the same mistakes that regular society has constructed, or create something better.
It's up to us -- the individuals in the community -- to decide if we want to be part of either, and work towards creating it. Without the community that makes up the driving force behind Steemit.com, there is no Steemit.com. We have the power to create change if we want to. We can make things better if we want to. Learning about the issues and understand the problems is required before we can apply a solution.
Decentralization towards common-unity is the solution as I see it. What about you?
Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.
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2017-03-01, 12:01pm