Steemit is not a platform for the "Everyone gets a trophy day" crowd. There is no pity shown to those who fail to make generous rewards off their blog posts. Nobody has to even look at the content you produce. It's a dog-eat-dog world.
Steemit is naked capitalism, dressed up as a revolutionary anarchist libertarian decentralized utopia. There are few regulations as to what you are allowed to do with your account, what you choose to post, how you vote, etc. On that level, Steemit does provide a platform that appears to be of a libertarian spirit. Each person can do what they want, without disaffecting others, and they will be left to their own devices.
Sounds too good to be true? You are correct, it is too good to be true. Not all accounts on Steemit are considered equals. Those with the largest wallets have the loudest voices and the biggest bite. It's true that there is no central command in the ether, policing bad behavior on Steemit, but there are activist accounts that believe vigilante justice is their prerogative. Accounts that believe they should be enforcing rules that don't exist, flagging content they don't agree with and generally attacking chosen enemies with impunity.
If you brought some money into Steemit and dumped say $50K or $100K into Steem, you will have a powerful voice on day one of your account, regardless of whether you choose to be a good neighbor or not. You can choose to upvote your own comments all day and make a nice return on your investment. You can choose to regulate against activities you don't approve of by flagging content all day. The point is, money is power on Steemit. Those that have it can do as they please and those without must toe the line, to ensure that they don't have their account vaporized by a surly whale.
With Steemit wealth, your account will make more money than smaller accounts, as it should be. The reality of the situation is that Steemit is actually a reflection of the world we live in, regardless of your governmental system. The disparity of account values on Steemit is staggering.
- 35 accounts > $1million
- 65 accounts > $500k
- 103 accounts > $250k
- 211 accounts > $100k
- 355 accounts > $50k
I am currently inside the top 5000 accounts by a few and my account fluctuates around $1k depending on the price of steem. That would put me roughly, just inside the top 20% of active accounts. The total number of active users, is at best, guess work. Using an analysis done by 
Using 25,000 active accounts and dividing 355 accounts that are > $50k we get .0142 or the top 1.4% of active users have accounts > $50k. That percentage is eerily reminiscent of the real world and the clout that the very few at the top have.
As if the > $1million set were the billionaires in the real world and the > $100k set are the multi-millionaires.
As in the real world, Steemit, behaves in a purely capitalist fashion, rewarding those who have more, with more. We are not all created equally, there is no "one man, one vote", the all mighty dollar runs this asylum, you are nothing more than a reflection of your wallet.