I don't think old Steem suffered its abuse because of a rabid attachment to freedom, but rather because of its size and its central planning (despite all the "decentralized" claims to the contrary). The tribes that are now emerging are to be expected, the natural evolutionary response as the bloated platform of Steemit splits into smaller, self-regulated patches. Stuart Kauffman (at the Santa Fe Institute) showed the flow success of this structure in his NK computer models. I wish I had time to go into that in more detail, but I'm on the road right now. But if anyone is interested in that, you can learn more in Kauffman's book "At Home in the Universe."