Steem Power, and the nature of power on Steemit

IT'S ABOUT 14 years ago that I marched in opposition to the war in Iraq. The sun was shining and there was a palpable sense of solidarity and purpose in the crowd. Newcastle isn’t a big town for protests, so seeing 20,000 people walking down Hunter Street was a new and exhilarating experience.
When I watched the news that night and saw that up to a million people around Australia had risen in protest, the feeling I’d been nurturing all day felt like it was being confirmed: We are the people and we are powerful.
Except we weren’t.

That quote is from an article I wrote last year, Power in Australia: The rich rule and the poor can help themselves, where I sought to take a hammer to the notion that 'the people' hold any reasonable political power, and that Australian ideals of egalitarianism still hold as true as the used to.

For those to young to remember, lots of people all around the world hit the streets to voice their opposition to the steaming geopolitical, economic and humanitarian clusterfuck that our military adventures in the Middle East have turned out to be. By and large, these protests achieved very little. I then go on to talk about some of the ways in which the wealthy and politically-well-connected run everything, and that what normal people want, or the actions they take, generally don't make much difference due to the effect that money (and the marketing/media time it buys) has on how power actually functions in Australia.

'Why are you re-hashing an old article?', I hear you ask. It's not just that I'm coming up on my 15 year anniversary of being part of something that failed to really achieve anything. It's that Steemit, and indeed the whole Steem blockchain, makes me think about power, and that much of what I've observed in 'real' politics (if there is such a thing) may apply here, albeit in not quite the same way.

Obviously, I'm not talking about power as in electricity, but power as in the ability to do things, to achieve, by whatever means, ones needs, wants and desires. Bertrand Russell defined power as "the production of intended effects" - the ability to have your intentions - whether they be needs or wants, satisfied. Of two people with the same desires, says Russell, the one who can achieve more of them has the most power.

Once you get this far, the analysis of the politics of most places, and certainly most western democracies, is pretty predictable. In my assessment, the following is depressingly plausible in Australia at least:

• Your vote doesn't count for much unless you live in a marginal/swing electorate. And even if your chosen representative wins, there's no guarantee that they or their party won't make a pig's ear of it. Nor do your elected representatives really give two shits about the letters normal people have written them.
• If, however, you can buy into the political process by donating $100,000 to the right people, or by having the money to run your own series of nation-wide attack ads, you opinion, no-matter how insane or self-serving it is, is suddenly amazingly important, and politicians will fall over themselves to satisfy your desires.
• This concentration of power then generally serves looks after itself - e.g.: politicians who own lots of real-estate opposing changes to the law that might make property more affordable, or giving themselves and the wealthy who donate to them tax cuts, while at the same time screwing the rest of us.
• More money equals more ability to achieve ones desires, as well as an increased ability to avoid any negative consequences of transgressing society's laws or conventions.

The question is this: How does Steemit, and all the Steem-based systems, compare to this?

Like many newbies, I sometimes feel like my vote here doesn't count for much - and this applies to both my upvote and my witness-vote. I have even felt that this is true of all low Steem Power users, because even collectively our vote is dwarfed by the SP of even a single whale.

Luckily, unlike politics, it's easier to earn enough SP to make your vote gradually count for more over time. The whale/minnow dynamic will change over time too, once there are lots more users. We only have about 60-70,000 accounts active each day on Steemit, so gathering enough low-sp votes to effectively neutralise one whale-vote is really difficult - it would take 10,000 $0.01 votes to counter a single $100.00 vote. Getting 1 in 6 people to vote for something is a big ask!

But what if we had millions of daily users? Instead of needing 16% of people to vote one way to have an effect, you now only need maybe 0.5 - 1% of users - even the lowest SP - to vote collectively in order to boost or drop a post reward by $100. I haven't taken changes in the value of SBD into account, but you get the idea. Collectives communities or unions of steemians may eventually wield enough power to challenge any account, but only if enough people join.

Yes, having more money here on Steemit gives you a lot more power in the system. But in order for that investment to continue to give good returns, new money has to keep coming into the system. This means big players from other social media have to come across - and they are only going to do that if there is an audience for them. This means Steemit and everything that relies on the Steem ecosystem need to keep attracting and retaining new users. If there are no new users, there will be no new investment, and people will go crawling back to Facebook and Youtube in search of an audience. Unless investors want to lose out, they will come to realise this and learn to act accordingly.

The possibility of collective action, as well as the need for growth will produce increasing political-style pressures on the big players in this system, whether they are witnesses or not. The wrangling over post-payouts, bidbots, self-voting, and 6th-day voting is an early symptom of this - a forerunner of what is to come. My prediction of the day: You ain't seen nothin' yet!

A common criticism of existing political structures is that the state holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, which it then misuses in order to maintain the positions of those in power. While there is no actual physical violence on Steemit, the act of flagging does inflict a penalty on those who receive them. A flag, or series of flags, from a high-SP user at full voting power can seriously alter the ability of the recipient to earn rewards on their posts. Is this violence per se? I'm not sure. But it is done without the consent of the recipient, and the threat of it could well be coercive in nature, so there are certain similarities.

The monopoly on this pseudo-violence on Steemit flows from both the vast disparity of SP and the reputation system. My flag is worth very little, and will not reduce the rep of anyone higher than 50. Me downvoting a whale is like a mosquito biting an actual real whale, except at least a real mosquito might get something out of the interaction. The analogy works in the other direction too - all small and delicate forms of life that fail to avoid a stray fin do not last long!

As was proven last year, even a random dude in the street can headbutt an ex-prime minister. I'm not sure the same is achievable here. In this sense, the monopoly (or, I should say, oligopoly) on the Steem analogue of violence is actually more complete than in broader life.

On one hand, people are generally well-conditioned to accept such coercion - given that it's how our political systems work. So people will put up with a lot of this - most users won't even give it a second thought. But, again, the 'powers that be' of Steem should be on notice. If a person doesn't like the coercive nature of government, it's actually very hard to avoid altogether. They have to try to change or dismantle current political structures, or at least move to a country with less oppressive laws. But, if someone finds the nature of power relations on Steemit coercive and oppressive, they can just stop posting, power down, and sell all their Steem and SBD. The ability to opt out of the Steem blockchain is much easier to exercise than to opt out of being governed by states in real life. If too many people were to choose that option, to leave the Steem blockchain, the experiment will fail and some investors will get seriously burned.

So, that's my rant for the day! Much of modern politics, and life in general, is subject to the whims of those with the most cash. And in some ways, Steem and Steemit replicate these inequalities. But even though the mechanisms whereby the system provides feedback to those holding power on Steemit are different in ways that might seem subtle, they are important too. The results of these differences will be exciting either way, and their ultimate end is not set in stone - at least not yet.

Thanks for reading. Upvotes, resteems and comments are always appreciated.

Photo by Spenser H on Unsplash