Which means that we are in a war of independence against the mainstream social media (the MSSM)
Mini-disclaimer: I'm just making these comparisons for the purpose of creating unity. I apologize in advance for all generalizations and historical incongruities. My main point is that in any revolution, there are ups-and-downs, there is inequality, there is opportunism, there is malice, and there is triumph... My point is that the struggle for the soul of this platform is worth it, and we need to become more solidly united together now more than ever. The future of not only this platform, but all of all future revolutions, depend on what happens now, what happens today. And for the record: yes, I know, they were all slave-owners. Some "enlightenment" they were all part of, huh. But still, think of how many people seeking to escape the worst forms of oppression and subjugation, found refuge in a land of opportunity that not only welcomed them, but actually enabled them to make something of themselves using their talents and skills. I think the analogy holds. People will be people, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
In my analogy, the creators of Steem and the Witnesses were like the Founding Fathers.
The British Crown, taxing us without representation, can be seen as today's mainstream social media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube... They can extract monetary value from our content, or worse yet censor it, without giving us fair stake in the whole enterprise... They've become tyrants that we must rebel against...
Our young revolutionary republic can be seen as our alternatives: Steemit, DTube, DSound, and all the other Front Ends... They're represent our new institutions, freed from the subjugation of the powers of the Old World...
The Steemit White Paper is like the Constitution of the United States
And Steemit represents the Congress.
It's a forum designed for the exchanging of ideas. It's supposed to democratize our new found independence and to give a voice to those who have a stake in this new system... AKA: all of us who are done using the traditional forms of social media, and tired of being exploited by their nefarious and self-serving ways, for their selfish ends...
Well, let me expand on this analogy, and make the following statement. Just because we have our new platform, and are freed from the subjugation we experienced at the hands of those centralized power-hungry giants doesn't mean the battle is over...
The war has only just begun.
I just finished reading @lexiconical's latest post...
In it, he highlighted how profiteering opportunists are gaming the system, cyphening wealth from our community for personal gain at the expense of the community. One just has to read Steemit articles such as this one to see there are clear abuses being committed...
Whales self-voting their worthless comments or other users exploiting bugs they found within the bidding-bots, there are plenty examples of people monopolizing the rewards pools for their own personal gain, and adding absolutely no value to the platform in the process.
Well, this is nothing new. In fact, look at any social experiment, this has always been the case.
During the Revolutionary War (which I am comparing to today's decentralized cryptocurrency revolution), some of the people who made the biggest fortunes, just like today's vested whales and stakeholders, were leading Americans who were selling supplies and equipment to the Continental Army at inflated prices.
Most of the members of the Continental Congress at the time were America's most profligate and successful land-owners and tradesmen. (That's why they wanted representation back in England, and could be incentivized in rebelling against the British.)
@LexiconicalTom Paine, one of the greatest voices of liberty and independence responsible for fomenting revolutionary sentiment against the vested whalesBritish, famously called out some of these war-profiteers in Congress who were merely trying to enrich themselves, denouncing them as nothing more than frauds.
Rich congressmen were frequently caught making purchases of supplies in secret from their own (not so cleverly concealed) companies and personal business associates at higher prices and using their inside knowledge of governmental needs and plans as a means to engage in profitable business speculation.
But let's not forget that on this platform there are incredibly committed and dedicated witnesses that spend countless hours curating young minnow's work and personally taking responsability for rewarding their contributions to the platform, to say nothing of their efforts to grow and sustain this platform, leading all of us on this platform to glory and riches in the process... I could name a few, but they know who they are. And we should remember that not everybody with a high-stake investment in this platform is out for pure personal self-enrichment... Many want the best for all of us... We should all remember to lend our support to them by voting for them as our witnesses and making sure they can continue to do the work they do...
Actually, you can read a great article about all of this war-profiteering and abuses that went on during the early revolutionary period here
What's important to note from this parallel between these two revolutionary periods, is that the members of congress were some of the richest men in America, just like the witnesses and vests here on Steemit are some of the richest and most powerful influencers on the Steem blockchain.
Something that @Lexiconical highlighted very well in his very important article was the following question:
What is the incentive for the rest of us to contribute quality content if all of the rewards are going to the same people who offer nothing to the platform? We do all the work, and they reap all the rewards. Is that also a similarity between post-revolutionary America and Steemit? Was this question on @Lexiconical's mind not also on good old Ben Frank's one as well?
Well, here's a key point I'd like to make...
America was back then, just like Steemit is today, a Social Experiment.
Sure, some things will never change. There will always be profiteers and opportunists trying to take dollars out of hard working people's pockets to stuff them in their own own.
Like any social experiment, it's an ongoing process.
Yes, as regular users, most of us mere minnows and dolphins, we can sit here with our jaws to the floor, stunned at the sheer amount of money that opportunists are cyphening from this platform, contributing absolutely nothing of value, and conclude that this is a rotten social experiment that we want to have nothing to do with.
Worse yet, we can conclude that we should follow their rotten example, and try to get the maximum pay-outs for the least amount of work possible.
That is Option A.
Option B, is that we make a stand, stage our revolt, and re-appropriate the platform for ourselves, and make a fair platform for all to enjoy in...
The blockchain is decentralized. It doesn't belong to any one person, it belongs to all of us.
What do you think early American colonists chose? What do you think made America the most prosperous and powerful nation in the world's history?
Did the poor minnows immigrants, landing in a far off, unfamiliar, even alien social media landscape continent think to themselves: "I guess this is gonna be worse than what I knew before? I should have never come here to begin with..."
Did they arrive there, get disheartened, and return back home to safe-old Facebook/Twitter Europe?
Even Africans who were kidnapped, betrayed, or worse... And arrived to America, not as indentured servants, but as other men's frickin' property...
Did they all go back to Africa at the soonest chance they got? Did they all want to set sail for Liberia when vessels were being commissioned for them to all go home after the Emancipation Proclamation?
No... There was something about this new place... This was their home. This was their birth land too, and they were just as fully deserving as anybody to make it there too.
Many chose to believe in the promise of making their own life in America... Though the lies and tricks that were played on the African-American population by the white man are too many to be recounted here... Those who were given 40 acres and a mule really did participate in the American dream, and their descendants are all the better off for it today, for sure...
There's no denying it... There were dire times... I'm sure some did lose heart... No doubt brave men and women's courage were tested...
Did many of them miss the simpler times before they were responsible for their own destiny..? Back in the tranquil comfort of serfdom, living on their lord's land, growing his food, fighting in his wars, having to pay tribute and swear loyalty to his cause... Of course some did...
And independence is hard work. It's much easier to choose the path of least resistance... It's much easier to serve a boss than it is to be our own masters and rely only on ourselves for our own success.
But did the vast majority of these early Americans shake those thoughts off, lace up their bootstraps, wipe the sweat from their brow, and grind their ass off to one day make something of themselves?
America through its shaky history did enjoy surges in egalitarianism... It wasn't always all bleak. Generations did make it beyond the status of their forefathers, and keep raising the bar... Many socio-political and economic battles were fought to right wrongs, seek retribution, settle grievances, redistribute the fruits of everyone's labor according to merit, and not entrenched privilege.
Hell, how much sacrifice was paid in blood to keep the American dream alive for so long?
"Bad times breed strong men, strong men make good times, good times breed weak men, weak men make bad times."
If that is true, and we are indeed living in bad times, following all those good times that America enjoyed, then America may turn out to be a failed social experiment... We may have collectively lost the battle for freedom, justice and equality on that one. Who knows... Or maybe we are just around the corner from a revival... Maybe it is not even unique to America... Maybe the whole world is soul-searching, looking for the misplaced pieces of a fractured psyche facing oblivion...
Maybe they were to prepare us for the trials and tribulations that lie ahead...
So let us not squander and waste the lessons of history, nor the insights that we gained from past great revolutions.
And let's also not downplay the real-world significance of a truly revolutionary experiment like Steemit...
The Old Powers, Facebook, Twitter and Google, fear the hell out of any decentralized platform that they cannot buy up, subvert, warp, taint, undermine and dilute to the point of no recognition...
Though we may be a small community here... 10 thousand users who are actively empowering themselves and their own decentralized platform for information sharing scares them ten times more than 100 thousand users complaining about their policies on their platform...
Something like Steemit is the antithesis of their model of control of information and the source of their evil, wicked, and corrupt power.
Every meaningful post and reward that we contribute to this platform and attribute to our community, is another tea crate we are dumping in the Boston harbour...
Every attempt to curate each other's work, and participate in the growth and success of the community, is a successful gathering of essential supplies and ammunition with which to fight these monsters.
Every bit of valuable data that we can encrypt to our blockchain is a successfully planned and orchestrated guerilla ambush against the Red Coats...
For sure, we will still requires more recruits.. We need more minutemen listing up to fight these battles on the front lines.. We need more loans from France in the form of speculators investing big sums of cash into Steem and trading it on the exchanges...
We need more momentum if we want any chance to win this war and to truly gain our independence.
But if everybody is only out for their own personal gain, this platform doesn't stand a chance, just like America's revolutionary war before it...
We must be vigilant of the snakes among us who would seek to undermine our efforts and contaminate our revolutionary spirit...
They are everywhere on this platform, just like any revolution... and though there is nothing that we can do to outright stop them, calling them out publicly (by post-shaming their behaviors, and flagging the crap out of their accounts), will prevent them from destroying all of us.