Corruption And Cowardice

I may just be 23 years old but if there's one thing I've learnt, it's that corruption and cowardice go hand in hand. Why is it that the "1%" can get away with whatever they want to do or say while the rules and norms of society apply to the other 99%? It's simple: The majority of us aren't willing to take a stand or do anything about it.

Why is that though? Are we too afraid of being the only ones willing to take a stand? Or is it because we fear the backlash from those who hold most of the power? Is this what freedom of speech has come down to? Is this what democracy has come down to? Do we really just have freedom of speech as long as we don’t talk about the elite? Is that really what defines freedom of speech in this day and age?

This is what we’ve turned freedom of speech into. We are all collectively to blame. We are all cowards and this cowardice is what allows the elites to make money through corruption.

Now why am I bringing all of this up? Because the recent shenanigans by one of those “1-percenters” has made me sick. I wrote up an article about it a while ago but unfortunately nobody was willing to take a stand for it. Many minnows and innocents lost their rewards (something that they had worked for) all due to the greed of one person.

Now before I delve further into this post, you should all know that steem is not infinite. There’s a limited reward pool which is used to pay out everyone who posts here. When people spam and upvote their comments, what do you think happens? It reduces the reward pool for everyone else. In simpler words, by spamming and self-upvoting, the user is stealing the money that rightfully belongs to people who actually create quality content. But that’s not all. The user actually threatens and bullies in his comments and according to him, those comments of his are worth $4-10 each.

It is sad that I have to write something like this again and hope that MAYBE…. JUST MAYBE this time one of the people who claim to care about this platform will be willing to take a stand.

What drove me to write this article was a post by a fellow steemian actually: https://steemit.com/abuse/@steemit.abuse/whale-upvote-abuse-whales-you-ve-got-1-hour-to-downvote

If you read that article then you will notice that berniesanders has created alt accounts and has comment spammed simply for the purposes of making money through his upvotes and creating alt accounts with a high reputation that will no doubt be used to downvote people that he has issues with and to grow his bot army to satiate his hunger and greed for more and more money off of this platform. But that post is not what I’m here to talk about.

You see my issue isn’t just the fact that berniesanders can comment spam and upvote his posts with his bot army and get away with it (Lord knows how many accounts that guy has. Creating more accounts and killing off genuine accounts seems to be his new hobby these days. Not to mention this hypocrisy is hilarious because he actually threw a huge fit when someone else was doing something similar and upvoting their comments with their bot army.). My issue is the fact that he believes each of his comment deserves an upvote from his bot army which gives him anywhere between $0.2 - $10 in post rewards (He currently uses 55-56 of his accounts, each with delegated power growing stronger each day). My issue is the fact that most of his comments are threats or spam and he upvotes them with his alt accounts. My issue is the fact that all these people who claim to be the care takers of this platform support this sort of behavior but when a minnow or someone weaker and less psychotic does something like this, these “caretakers” have no issue in jumping the gun to downvote and practically delete that account on steemit by making it impossible for that person’s posts to be visible.

Now don’t get me wrong. I wholeheartedly support the work of @steemcleaners , @spaminator , @adm to name a few. But it’s funny when all they do is act hypocritical because they’re too afraid to take a stand for what’s right. Now let me show you a few pictures and you people can be the judge of whether each of these comments deserve the rewards that they’re getting: