There is no need for a hierarchical society to develop here... There already is one.

Of course, it was implied, but perhaps worded strangely - I apologize. The steem community is NOT class-less; the very distinction between "whales", "dolphins", "minnows" and "sea monkeys" makes that abundantly clear. The question I tried to ask: will the disparity become greater or smaller over time, as Steemit rises in popularity and population and replaces FB and reddit and saturates the user market (~7 Billion)? Will it be of any consequence at all even, once the vast majority of contributors and content creators have settled with the disappointing reality that the raindrops of an aristocrat's attention might never water their garden - simply because there are so few? Will they instead begin to carve out their micro-niches?

It has been usual for men to think and to say: this guy has a problem with income equality, he must be a socialist. Burn that witch! The truth is, I think that being wealthy is not a crime per se. In a perfect society, however, the rich serve the valuable purpose of redistributing the wealth (a billionaire needs a villa, a yacht, and must pay for upkeep); his investments, if wise, will be to the benefit of all in the long run. In other words, I'll prefer being plankton in a rich sea of abundance over being dolphin in a toxic lake. Give me a wise and benevolent king, and I will abandon all speech of democracy and elections and egality and gladly take my place in the bottom decile of a totalitarian society.

That is why I am not a fan of "caps" and other artifical means that complicate the law, the incentive to distribute wealth fairly (not evenly!) should be systemic.

Thus, my argument is not one of envy - I predict that the distribution of wealth will not change greatly, and even worsen the more users Steemit attracts, resulting in a proportionally longer "tail" and the Gini coefficient closing in on 1. Eventually, the "tail" will mostly interact with itself, as the "density" of ocean mammal's curation lessens.

In the long run, it might - that is why I am so interested in the math - even lead to a diverse, informative, enlightening, funny, and if need be, even sexy top/trending/recommended page. But only under the bold assumption that (just to name a name) FOX, MSNBC or Disney don't buy up a few dozen top 50 accounts.

Already, accounts are for sale and "policing" brigades being called for. Bots are running rampant.

Since the content remains immutably in the blockchain, no matter the downvotes, it is up to the developers to forge intelligent tools to sort, browse, curate and create content and weapons for everyone to defend himself against spam, propaganda, battles of the bots and censorship.

Then inequality won't be any problem anymore, the rank in the hierarchy not matter, and the market be truly "free".