Like you, I care more for good content and spirited debates than the monetizing potential; I am looking for a decentralized, self-organizing, censorship-proof alternative to reddit, Facebook, Wordpress and MySpace, not the new Bitcoin or Ethereum. 

But I am of course interested how a hierarchical society will likely develop under the meritorcratic rules set by the Steem engine. Much of it will only be revealed in the future, when the user market nears its saturation and more sophisticated attempts at rigging and manipulating have been made. But already, the whitepaper and the current wealth distribution reveal interesting math and data, allowing some predictive power, room for speculation and means of analysis. _Quo vadis, Steemit?_

<center>http://i.imgur.com/JgDJhXf.jpg</center>

Browsing Steemit, I bookmarked a few posts and articles I found enlightening; they are a sort of "summary" of what I learned in the past days.

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economy and strategy
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Uh, Steem, Steemit, Steem Power, Steem Dollars, whales, dolphins, rewards for good voting, money for blogging?

- @donkeypong: [Come for the STEEM, Stay for the Steem Power. This is Getting Unfair for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Reddit, and Facebook.](https://steemit.com/steemit/@donkeypong/come-for-the-steem-stay-for-the-steem-power-this-is-getting-unfair-for-bitcoin-ethereum-reddit-and-facebook)  
A little background on why you want to "power up"
- @roelandp: [SteemStream.com - A Realtime Visualisation of All Activity on Steemit](https://steemit.com/steem/@roelandp/steemstream-com-a-realtime-visualisation-of-all-activity-on-steemit)  
What the title says: live feed monitoring of all major activities (upvotes, comments, money transfers, orders, new users, etc); upon which steemviz.com builds
- @crypt0: [Steemit: Whales, Dolphins, and Minnows- The Importance of Steem Power on Steemit](https://steemit.com/steemit/@crypt0/steemit-whales-dolphins-and-minnows-the-importance-of-steem-power-on-steemit)  
_Minnows_ have very little ability to influence the direction that votes take, as their votes are not worth very much. As _Dolphins_ vote, they begin to entice others to vote, capturing the attention of recent post's voter's attention a tad. _Whales_ are the big kahunas. When they like something, YOU'LL know. Hell, you'll probably like their content too, if you don't want to miss out on earning a few bucks by not liking them early on.
- @coinhoarder: [STEEM PROPOSAL: Abolishing Liquidity Incentives And Reverting The Funds To Provide Actual Autonomous Liquidity](https://steemit.com/sip/@coinhoarder/steem-proposal-abolishing-liquidity-incentives-and-reverting-the-funds-to-provide-actual-autonomous-liquidity)  
First Whale problems :) Closely related to: 
- @blakemiles84: [Handful of Users Are Gaming the Liquidity Reward System And Earning 1200 STEEM per Hour](https://steemit.com/steem/@blakemiles84/two-users-are-gaming-the-liquidity-reward-system-and-earning-1200-steem-per-hour)
(extremely interesting discussions!)

and of course

- @boardwalk-steem: [SteemIt Resource Repository - Collection of all the great posts on how to SteemIt!](https://steemit.com/wikiversity/@boardwalk-steem/lets-start-a-steemit-resource-repository)
- @hipster: [Awesome Steem](https://steemit.com/awesome/@hipster/awesome-steem)  
Also a list of Steem(it) beginner/intro/howto/FAQ/tutorials
- @pfunk: [Your Steem account is worth money! How to secure it with a new owner key to keep it yours forever](https://steemit.com/steemit-guides/@pfunk/your-steem-account-is-worth-money-how-to-secure-it-with-a-new-owner-key-to-keep-it-yours-forever)
This is important. Do it. 

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philosophy, politics, math and game theory
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> _Once upon a time, there was a king who collected all metadata of his citizens. He was a wise and benevolent king who brought material and spiritual prosperity to the country. The data was used only to optimize administration, to the benefit of all._
> _But then his land was occupied, and the usurper got hold of the data, parsed it and used it to weed out all those who would be most likely - and most able - to oppose his new reign of terror._

Moral of this (true) story: it is not that the devs andor whales of _today_ are on trial - more power to them for kicking off this project and forming such an awesome community! But what of the accounts that change ownership for millions in hard instant cash next month...? Does, in case of an emergency, the long "tail" have the power to oppose the corrupt elements of tomorrpw? Such concerns are not to be dismissed off-hand in a world where agenda-pushing and opinion-forming are such valuable "markets". 

But let us assume the community is left alone with its beautiful anarchy: if upvoting _potentially_ popular content is systemically incentivized, what will the "hot" pages look like in the long run? **Read these 23 reasons why you should care now - \#5 will blow your mind!**

- @biophil: [What does Game Theory say about Steem? (Part 1)](https://steemit.com/steem/@biophil/what-does-game-theory-say-about-steem-part-1) ([Part 2](https://steemit.com/economics/@biophil/beauty-contests-the-game-theory-of-steem-part-2); [Part 3](https://steemit.com/money/@biophil/is-steem-paying-for-groupthink-the-game-theory-of-steem-part-3))  
Could the incentives actually backfire, causing steemit to turn into the usual catlolpic circlejerk boobfest? Prisoner's dilemma, beauty contest and why puppies are superior to kittens
- @rok-sivante: [The 7 Fatal Flaws That Could Kill Steemit (Or Massively Accelerate Its Growth IF Transformed)](https://steemit.com/steemithelp/@rok-sivante/the-7-fatal-flaws-that-could-kill-steemit-or-massively-accelerate-its-growth-if-transformed)
Interesting and long thesis. How to treat NSFW content?
- @demotruk: [The urge the join the circle jerk is stronger than on Reddit.](https://steemit.com/steemit/@demotruk/the-urge-the-join-the-circle-jerk-is-stronger-than-on-reddit)  
Voices similar concerns: does the pay-for-votes system actually amplify reddit's "Karma Whoring" phenomenon?
- @pitbull808: [Steemit Takes Advantage of Reddit’s Heavy Censorship](https://steemit.com/steemit/@pitbull808/steemit-takes-advantage-of-reddit-s-heavy-censorship)  
Goes into a different direction. Censorship-related "eternal septembers" (MySpace, Digg, reddit, Facebook) are the problem. "Whether steemit is the solution is not clear [...] but it is one of the more unique attempts to try and solve the decades long social media problem with the results of the experiment, whether failure or success, undoubtedly closely watched by many."
- @business: [The disappearing middle class of Steemit, and how to fix it.](https://steemit.com/inequality/@business/the-disappearing-middle-class-of-steemit-and-how-to-fix-it) 
What, free markets? No way! Cap those incomes! _If someone has 2000000 STEEM power, and they double it every year, while you double your 200 how much do you think your STEEM will be worth in a decade from now?_ Caused lively debate and @bacchist's comment: _Steem economics bear very little resemblance to capitalism. In capitalism, workers produce commodities for sale on the market. In Steem, authors produce posts which are not commodities. Objects with no exchange-value are not commodities, even if they satisfy human wants or needs (ie, even if they are bearers of use-value). Steem is a lot closer to a gift economy than a market based economy._
- @daowisp: [Building the Infrastructure of Decentralized Civilization. Part 1 - Communications](https://steemit.com/networking/@daowisp/building-the-infrastructure-of-decentralized-civilization)  
Not exclusively Steem-related, this article goes into how to build a parallel telecommunications network using affordable, powerful fixed-wireless radio equipment
- @jpdimensions: [Proof of Esteem - Cognifying Content, Mining Time, Attention, and Appreciation with “Heart-Like-Tweets”](https://steemit.com/steemit-faq/@jpdimensions/proof-of-esteem-cognifying-content-mining-time-attention-and-appreciation-with-heart-like-tweets)  
_When some of today's top social media influencers with large followings start joining Steemit, how will their reputation accelerate their influence?_
- @aaseb: [Is Steemit a community where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?](https://steemit.com/steemit/@aaseb/is-steemit-a-community-where-the-rich-get-richer-and-the-poor-get-poorer)  
...theorizes that, due to the high inflation rates, an account with a lot of steempower will grow faster than an account that doesn't have much (in terms of interest rate) unless the account with a lot of steempower doesn't vote or publish anything, resulting in the proportion of total shares getting bigger for the big accounts and smaller for the small accounts.
- @sitaru: [Let's do some math and see where the power is! How is the steem power distributed and how much values it?](https://steemit.com/money/@sitaru/let-s-do-some-math-and-see-where-the-power-is-how-is-the-steem-power-distributed-and-how-much-values-it)  
Top 100 accounts hold 91.56% Steem Power of the Top 5000 accounts. [Top 5000 list](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O2V8iUJOoQrKMEhfTq3T1gwtp_dNJcBgQOLAP-LBmRM/edit?usp=sharing) on Google docs.
- @norbu: [Steemit and the ideals of Non-Violence](https://steemit.com/nonviolence/@norbu/steemit-and-the-ideals-of-non-violence)
- [steemd.com/distribution](https://steemd.com/distribution)  
'nuff said.

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functionality
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Let it be noted that Steemit is still beta (as the header logo indicates), and the functionality we all have come to appreciate from other platforms -- PMs, favorites, following etc -- has already been announced. In other news, Steem is open source, write your own webinterface!

In that spirit, here's an aggregation of ideas so they are not forgotten: 

- @aleksei-filonov: [3 must-do things for Steemit](https://steemit.com/steemit/@aleksei-filonov/3-must-do-things-for-steemit)  
1: User Profiles, 2: Private Messaging, 3: Bookmarks.
- @acidyo: [Some steemit improvement ideas I haven't seen here yet](https://steemit.com/post/@acidyo/some-steemit-improvement-ideas-i-haven-t-seen-here-yet)  
Visibility of microtransactions, account stats, "stars"/tips (reddit gold?)

No doubt, profiles, PMs, favorites and even reply notifications are already in the works, they are the _sine qua non_ of such a network. Personally, I found that a log like https://steemd.com/@username is missing, even if only to come back to older content more easily, or to retract votes if necessary.

I feel the markdown implementation does not yet work as intended. No `~~strikethrough~~`, for example, no `^sup`,  and `###headers` are no fun thanks to #hashtags.

[Piston](http://piston.readthedocs.io/en/develop/index.html) seems to indicate that Steem stand-alone browsers are a possibility to look forward to...?

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tldr;
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I'm very excited and looking forward to watching how this experiment - that is what it is, according to the whitepaper - will turn out: and what it will prove. 

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#steemit #economy #distribution #liquidity #philosophy #politics #math #gametheory #steempower #steemit-faq #anarchism #how-to #steemit-potential #forecast #usury #compundinterest #demurrage #gift #feedback #analysis #reddit #hope #love #peace #prosperity #abundance

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