Hi Steemians

I have decided to post this only here so as not to hang my dirty washing in 'public' (like to my Youtube subcribers)

I returned from Steemfest2 this week.

Firstly, the POSITIVES!

It was extremely well organised so big thanks to @roelandp for an amazing job done. The venues were superb, food delicious (although lots of dead animals were served) and the entertainment and accommodation was stunning as was the city too.

And then there were the people. Fascinating, engaging and most of them, outside the box. It felt like we were part of a community and we all want this to 'work' whatever that means.

The presentations were on the whole very encouraging and some even blew me away. The Hardfork trailer was amazing and the Steem Park project and Sndbox team have got some fabulous ideas. There are so many people bringing so many ideas and apps into the space including APPICS, DTUBE, DLIVE etc. And then there is the SMT project which I frankly do not really understand fully. 

So I had a great time, met great people and even got a bit of sun. And felt that there might be a future in this venture.

But it left me with some BIG QUESTIONS.

I was attracted to Steemit by the anarchic philosophy and decentralisation. I liked the idea of being rewarded for my creations - something that facebook and to a great extent Youtube seem to take for themselves. But the money is secondary to the potential revolutionary side of Steemit.

I was recommended to read articles by Dan Larimer @dan and really liked his philosophy. 

Yes I admit. I want a revolution of some sort. A revolution to me means turning the tables and prying away illegitimate power from the parasitic class and giving it back to the people.

It took me a year from the time I joined, to actually make an effort to try and figure out how it worked. I put a call out for help on Facebook and a follower of my work on Youtube @samstonehill contacted me and helped me a great deal with his tutorial videos and one-to-one help.

I still see myself as a beginner and have spent quite a few hours/days trying to figure out how best to play the game. And that is the way I choose to see it. As a virtual reality game. And I am playing as a creator, curator and a recent investor.

So here are my concerns.

Having been brought up in a religious home and in our society in general, I am acutely aware of the power of groupthink. The atmosphere at Steemfest felt to me like there was a positive slant and not enough desire for dissent.

I asked a couple of questions and was brushed off with both of them. So here are my questions.

As I said above, I want to be a part of changing the dynamic in our society from one where a few people hold most of the power. Yet Steemit still seems to have that sort of hierarchy going on. Although it can be argued that inequality is OK and perhaps natural to some extent, there seem to be very little concern about this form the people at the top!!
A French Steemian mentioned that Étienne de La Boétie, a French philosopher, wrote FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO about voluntary servitude and how that seems to be part of the human condition. I feel to some extent, Steemit has created that kind of feel. We at the bottom end of Steem, are working our butts off, promoting steem at every corner, whilst @ned and many of the Whales, benefit from our efforts without supporting us.

So my first question is, is Steemit just another incarnation of the system just with different parasites sitting at the top with all the power?

I met Dan earlier this year and I could immediately feel a connection with him. He was obviously a genius but also humble. Unfortunately, I didn't get the same feeling meeting Ned. My conspiratorial voice has brought up many questions about him. I can't find any articles that say why he is involved with this project. He is the son of a finance professional and has never rebelled openly against his fathers' industry. And when he was asked at the fireside chat session about his 3.5 MILLION steem sitting in his account, all he could say was that he hoped they would be worth a lot more soon!

THAT WAS VERY REVEALING. 

Is Ned in it just for the money? And if so, is that a concern?

Ned did delegate the 3.5 million steem (seemingly to random people) but he recently took it back as it was being abused. Why doesn't delegate it to those who promote steemit and help minnows get traction by putting his steem power out to tender? 

At the opening talk he was going on about how this is going to be huge and how many users there are - up to 400,000 but that number is MEANINGLESS. I joined in 2016 but after one post, I didn't engage for a whole year. So why did Ned and others go on about that high number, when the useful number is 25,000 which is the number of active daily users. Thats not a small number but its around a TWENTIETH of the number they bandied around. And why do that? Thats the type of marketing bullshit I expect form a centralised platform.

Why does he not post himself on the site?

Although there are many great people on this platform, and some fantastic stuff is taking place including charity work, there are also plenty of rogues.

There are whales who have enough power to destroy the little man if they take a disliking to him/her. When I brought this up at fest, they dismissed it.

There was also an interesting conversation I had with @sneak who is the CTO. We got onto the topic of vaccinations and as soon as a steemian suggested that there may be a link between autism and vaccinations (based on his personal experience with parents who saw immediate decline in their children's health after vaccinations) he said he would downvote any such idea and walked away in disgust. Which makes me wonder what the values of the people at the top of steemit are holding by?

Then there is the decentralisation claim. Is it really decentralised? How does Steemit inc work in terms of power versus the witnesses?

Can the witnesses decide to fire Ned or any of the dev team?

If Facebook approached Ned and offered him 500 million dollars, what would happen if he accepted it?

What about the 70 MILLION steem sitting in the steemit inc account?

And the groupthink happy thing was disturbing because everyone wants to be on the right side of people so that they get upvoted and not downvoted! 

A final side issue is that as an investor I just noticed something which i found discouraging. Dan Larimer has cashed in tens of thousands of steem recently. How can I recommend this as an investment when he is doing that?

I am sure there is a lot more to say, but I'll leave it there.

Looking forward to hearing your comments.

love and blessings

Danny