Humans are biased to perceive as fair whatever paradigm maximizes benefit to themselves or their cause. To achieve fairness, or to derive a set principles that are benefit-neutral, an actor cannot have any sense of self. Historically, this is where the concept of a 'God' or other 'Supreme Being' steps in. Ironically, supreme beings are human constructs of selfless actors from which principles/rules/laws can be accepted as fair and just... and if you look at Christian or Muslim history you'd have a hard time accepting their principles as fair and just.
As you are human and therefore possess an inherently biased paradigm of fairness it is not possible to create any system that is fair as a singular actor. It is only possible use a consensus model to attempt to maximize benefits for the majority - which is exactly what is being done with Steemit.
If the best that can be achieved is to maximize benefits for the majority there will necessarily be a minority that perceives the system as unfair. Humans are not capable of creating anything without flaws - there is no thing a human has created which is objectively perfect. So in creating a 'fairest' system humanely possible, unfairness must be accepted. Ironic, yes?
All that said, the current socio-economic system is fair for 1% and unfair for 99% of the participants. If you can get Steemit to distribute wealth and security in such a way that it is fair to 51% of participants you've just made the world a much, much better place. ;)
I think your characterization of 1% and 99% is exaggerated greatly. We have built a system that systematically transfers value from those who don't work to those who do work. In time it should spread.
All life starts out as a centralized single cell organism and eventually decentralized through cell division. That is what we are doing. If a system grows too fast it loses identity and dies. Things must grow in controlled manner to maintain structural integrity.
I have seen the wealth shifting from a few accounts to many and that is easily seen through the transparency of the blockchain. Hard work is rewarded from what I can understand, a lot of what steemit bases its value on is the contribution of work similar to the (meaningless in my opinion) miners that search for specific bits of information to mine a block.
Our content is the block and miners are more like curators. I could be completely wrong, but I see some similarities between these aspects, and also realize that bitcoin must make some changes because I don't think it can handle what will be coming its way once it becomes far more mainstream.
And you are right originally you created the idea and the wealth was concentrated in a very small area like a single celled organism. that organism breaks and expands into multiple cells with a lot of different roles. Some are vital parts that would be deadly if removed and others are of lesser importance individually, but together form an incredible system. As wealth is distributed, we will find those that are the brain and those who contribute to purge the system of toxins as well as those who just wish to float along and be part of the body.
Again not a perfect example, but one that helps me visualize what steemit may become in the future if it continues at this state. Right now I see it as an embryo about ready to grow larger and be birthed out into the real world where it will interact with people outside the cryptocurrency amneotic fluid that surrounds it now and into the mainstream users hands.
Right now the wealth distribution on Steemit is less fair than wealth distribution within the current fiat system; currently 1% of fiat participants control more than 50% of fiat wealth, whereas on Steemit:
Steemit is definitely distributing wealth from the 1% the 99%, whereas the fiat economy is funneling wealth to the 1% at an alarming rate. So Steemit is doing a much better job of creating a fair system of wealth distribution. I also agree that value is, for the most part, being transferred very efficiently from those not contributing to those that are. The analogy of healthy organic growth is spot on - Steemit is barely a newborn baby!
Now, what I really meant to say was .... "All that said, the current fiat/central bank socio-economic system is fair for 1% and unfair for 99% of the participants." ;)
I see Steemit as David and the US Federal Reserve as Goliath. If you can do a better job distributing wealth than current central bank complex, you win. And if you win, the 99% wins too.
The idea of wealth distribution is way overblown and becoming more and more so in a digital world, as users can seemlessly transfer wealth among different digital assets without censorship. The usual argument against the US dollar is that the US left the gold standard in 1971. So what? What is to stop a person from creating their own gold standard by converting dollars into gold every time they get a paycheck, effectively eliminating their exposure to US dollars... and they could have done that for the past 45 years.
The unfairness comes in when gold is outlawed and confiscated as was done in 1933 by the US government. With blockchain-based solutions coming online, it may eventually be possible to seamlessly hold gold and pay with dollars without censorship... and that goes for any other digital asset, or synthetic digital asset.
Wealth and money aren't the same thing. Money tracks wealth but it isn't the wealth itself. This means as long as there is a platform, there is a possibility for bloggers to leverage their talent for upvotes which can result in high money rewards. The talent is the actual wealth, the rewards are supposed to flow toward the talent.
To reflect on last part of your post. All new users that would come to platform will probably be in a minority and new distribution would need to take place to satisfy new 51%. That 51% percent would be again percieved by those 49% to be unfair. Truth is that you can't satisfy everyone. Even in perfect system where everybody would be equal and 100% would think it's fair, someone would think that its not fair for him. Since each being has his own moral code and principles where he measures himself to others.
Yes, it is completely possible that today's 99% are tomorrow's 1%. It's actually very likely... if Steemit matches the market cap of Facebook, 1 STEEM = ~ $3500 USD. So the 70,000 or so users that are here today would become the new wealthy elite, and those that join Steemit in five years will consider wealth distribution to be unfair. Kinda like the baby boomers and the millenials...
if i understand it correctly SP is diluted at 10% a year if your account stays passive. As for me, this is single biggest selling point of steem. This is paradigm shift, because we will have organizations like were most influental people are actual users and contributors and not passive rich 1%
Yes, the dilution is complete genius. The passive rich can park their wealth in SD and earn interest to preserve purchasing power, but then they loose influence. If they want to maintain influence.. they have to work for it! It's awesome.
The problem? Steem Dollars aren't currently properly pegged to the USD.
Steem Dollars are working very well, it just takes the market some time to grow up around it. Like a toddler getting its balanced. The market learns from experience more than intelligence. In recent days steem dollar volume has been increasing and it has been trading at 96 to 97% of the dollar. About a credit card processing fee. It will only get better.
We saw the same thing with bitUSD - the peg is very dependent on liquidity. I'm personally amazed at how well the peg is working given how new the asset is. With everything the devs learned working on bitAssets I'm 100% confident the SD peg is only going to get tighter.