The desire for non-violence and voluntaryism is strong on Steemit, and for noble reasons. If we could all live in peace, and act for the benefit of ourselves and others, that would be fantastic! But how do we get to that point? Personally, I do not think it is possible to trust that everyone will act on good principles without a form of government. We can push for a non-coercive, non-violent government, but I can't imagine a successful society without one. It would be too easy for things like child molestation and slavery to become rampant without something to combat it.
But I especially disagree with your following statement:
Any economic system of voluntary rules and incentives I create will struggle to gain traction unless it is used and operated by enlightened individuals. Steem can be an incredibly powerful tool in the hands of aware individuals living in the moment, but it will utterly fail if it is overcome by unaware individuals trapped in their own ego. Jealously, greed, envy, malice, spitefulness, and vengeance will destroy any community.
You cannot realistically expect that a public platform will only bring in "enlightened individuals." Everyone is invited to join, so your options are to either begin restricting access to the platform, or deal with these users another way. Personally I think voting takes care of this.
But also, the US was built off of the backs of many people with these exact characteristics. Look at Seattle for example, our founding fathers were a bunch of jealous, selfish, greedy families who just wanted to profit from making their own town. Their competition and conflict helped drive Seattle to become the successful city it is - if you are interested read Sons of Profits.
My own view of the world is that we cannot have good without evil. There is no such thing as pleasure without pain. This directly relates to people as well. I don't think a time will ever exist where life will purely be "good" because as humans we need conflict to make life interesting. The only way I see through this is to become the best problem solvers that we can be. What that entails is the tricky part!
Living in the moment, meditation, and cognitive behavioral therapy are all things to help us become better resolvers of conflict. Furthermore we can incentivize others to act accordingly (upvoting posts we want to encourage), but I don't think it is reasonable to expect or set a goal that everyone will be able to become rational, kind people.
Pain will always exist, but we can work to lessen it.
Last note - I think we share much of the same intention for what we want to see happen in the world, but our approaches are different. This is not an attack on you, but a counter to your idea. Still a Steemit fan, and I have great hope for the future of the platform =)
RE: Why do we fight to change the world?