Yes, it's easy to see all the ways the system has been gamed, but thats just a natural evolution of things.. Theres always going to be people that come in and try to take more than they give, simply because thats what they have been conditioned to do. That sort of behavior will start to dissipate when those people gain perspective on their fruitless attempts at getting satisfaction through egoic gain. They know no other way.

I'm sure that steem will evolve as a platform as needed - but I don't in any way feel like a victim of the earlybirds (whales) getting so much intiial influence and tipping the scales in their favor. They earned their positions.

To me, it's simply a wakeup call that we can't do this alone.

Its not about doing it alone.

Our connectivity and togetherness is whats going to pave the way to the life and world that we're all here for.

This is why voting bots are so popular - they create a sort of pseudo-community of resource allocation and cooperation. The problem is that they are inherently empty and ultimately just feeding into the same purposelessness and isolation that leads to chasing $$$.

I think the key is to join forces with others to create concentrations of value, and to do it with a deep sense of purpose that goes far above and beyond money and lambos. :)

Everyone wants to be a whale - but we have the ability to come together and form new types of alien organism and social ecosystems.

There's always a way forward.