So from the perspective of a writer, publisher, and artist I think it's very interesting that Steem has chosen to attempt to build its value system on a commodity that people more or less don't value in the real world. We talk a lot about unbalanced distribution of rewards here, but Steem has much better distribution of rewards than any artistic field.

• Even with all the vote-selling and delegation, a higher percentage of people are voting on content here than are doing its equivalent (buying periodicals, books, and art) in the real world.
• Rewards for content creators are distributed in considerably broader fashion here than in reality, where the entire economy is dependent on huge hits - one of the big reasons I'm absolutely against returning to nonlinear rewards.
• Publishing here is very weird but very democratic. Anyone can build a curation initiative, show their ability to select interesting content, build an audience, and be modestly successful as a publisher. There was a huge paradigm shift in publishing when putting work online dramatically reduced overhead costs, and I see Steem or its successors repeating that pattern.

So when you say it isn't working, I think it's absolutely working. There are the foundations of a new economy here. It's one that isn't primarily based on content, but that was never going to happen, because we have all the evidence in the world that people don't value content enough to base an economy on it.

Steem is changing that, and the fact that it's changing that by increasing the value of content by 100% instead of 10000% is just a reflection of real human values and the fact that the original idea was overblown. What it's actually doing is still pretty amazing.