Thanks for posting the pointer to your earlier post on The Myth of Authority, as I had not read that. However, on reading it, I'm a bit puzzled by some of its claims or assertions regarding cryptocurrency and especially Steem/Steemit. Although the Steem blockchain is decentralized in its storage, its rules are not. Instead, they are agreed upon by a relatively small set of witnesses who are, in essence, elected. Those witnesses are our the authorities, or perhaps even more, those witnesses/developers who make the hardforks and convince other witnesses to adopt them are our authorities. I don't see how this differs from other elective federal/state governments.

For instance, I feel that my posts and posts I upvote should get rewards whenever they are upvoted, not just within 7 (or 6.5) days. If there were no authorities, shouldn't I be able to make that happen, at least for my own posts and my own upvotes?

HF20 looks like it is going to further complicate many of the Steem rules. It is already very difficult to tell what effect user actions have on Steem, so much so that there are many posts trying to analyze current and HF20 implications. I'm not sure that I like all of the changes in HF20, yet if I want to live and play in Steem country, it seems that I will be "compelled" to accept them. Compelling is not voluntary. One could argue that I don't have to use Steem, but that is like saying if you don't like the country, then move out! Sounds like authority to me.

There is also clearly a hierarchy here. Since Steem has a GINI coefficient near 1, a few users have considerable power over most other users. Most of us are well aware that one large user can downvote us out of existence and deny us any part of the reward pool. That has a negative effect on freedom of speech--more so than on many other platforms.

In your Myth post you say that we should recognize that people are generally good. I agree with that. In fact, we see that here on the blockchain with a number of amazing groups and individuals working to reward quality and engagement. Unfortunately, it doesn't take too many bad apples to ruin the pie. Crypto (and Steem) has been subject to a large number of scams and greedy, self-serving behavior. In fact, I would say that even though it is not really anarchy, by being closer to anarchy crypto has suffered much more. Witness the hacks and bug exploitation that has allowed siphoning massive amounts of crypto without anyone being able to do anything about it--except, that is, to assert authority and force a hardfork. Unfortunately, it seems to take some kind of central authority to control the few bad actors.

So it seems that we need some rules, and something has to make those rules. Something else has to sometimes change or even override those rules when they have unintended consequences. I have a vague suspicion that our difficulty with all this stems from some combination of Hayek's conceit of knowledge and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.