One could start another chain (with slightly modified code) without the desired parties (or the ninja-mined stake that is clearly disliked) but starting over wouldn't necessarily be good for the witnesses' bottom line. I never understood why someone didn't just restart the blockchain under "more fair" conditions. It's open source and "decentralized" code.

Oh, it would absolutely suck for the current witnesses' bottom line. They have a lot involved and invested in the current status quo, both financially and personally. I certainly wouldn't blame them if they were against the general idea on general principles.

But I can tell you exactly why no one has just restarted the blockchain with a different set of assumptions.

It's expensive and tedious, and I've come to the conclusion that nobody involved really understands the underlying mechanics of interaction which are both explicit and implicit. That is to say, "they don't know shit about what they even made." Which isn't a terribly unusual state of affairs, it's just annoying.

One could spend some time thinking about the mechanics, come to the realization that you should always assume the worst when it comes to anything that can be monetized and start from scratch, restarting a chain utilizing the new found experience from the failure of this chain. But that would be harder than the prior option and could take considerable work.

Some of us have even had entire careers based around that kind of thinking. It's just one more game. Any game designer worth their salt will tell you that every game has somebody that wants to exploit it. That is not saying something bad either about games or people who play games – it's a simple observation about human nature and how people engage with the world around them.

Once you accept that, you can make certain assessments of what is going to come to pass given various incentives and disincentives for players. Three quarters of the people I've ever worked with in the game industry could have taken the original Steem blockchain proposal and told you that bots would become a massive part of what keeps SP in motion, only SP in motion makes a difference, and that the pre-mined stake value was going to be a huge inertial mass which kept value from actually budging. They probably would've taken a couple of more weeks to come up with the rest of the way things have been broken, but it would've been early.

But nobody involved knew anything about game systems. Nobody involved really knew anything about financial systems (which, when looked at objectively, are just a big, very expensive game). They knew a whole lot about how to get math to turn out the way they wanted as long as it wasn't in motion, and they knew a whole lot of things that they wished were true.

The rest is just fallout.

One could just give up on blockchain and take some of the decentralized principles and try something else. Blockchain isn't the only decentralized way to approach any centralized problem. The only issue is there's less of a monetary incentive involved. But there are still people with "principles" left out there, right?

First, I would have to actually see someone sit down and sketch out an idea of what "the problem" is. The absence of a clear statement of what the system is supposed to be providing in terms of problem-solving power is one of the big issues. It's one of the most critical failures across the board. What do we actually want it to do? Is it supposed to be an actual quantum token of value? Is it a way of keeping score of how much "good content" a given account provides to the ecosystem? Is it a means of distributing governing authority over a system of thousands of people in a way that gets the results that you want? All of these things are different axes and solving for all of them at the same time may simply be impossible – but that was the promise.

There are a lot of "decentralized solutions" for a lot of things out in the world that blockchain databases have absolutely no point of contact with. You wouldn't know it by listening to the cryptocultists, but there's an entire world out there. But you have to start by clearly and succinctly stating what the problem is you want to solve. Then you have to accept that you can only solve that problem with your solution.

However, if you are hoping that systems will work because "there are still people with principles left out there," I have a lovely bridge in San Francisco that you may wish to invest in purchasing. Don't count on the good grace of other people to make the world better. Principles are a lovely thing but they don't solve problems. Generally, they just create them. Instead, you need to come up with something that provides value to individuals, but that value doesn't necessarily have to be fiscal. Build a tool that everyone finds makes their life easier? You will be rolling in resources of various sorts to make your next project. Show people that they have a problem that they didn't realize they needed solved before? Even better.

But counting on principles to save you? Counting on principles to motivate and keep people engaged in dissolutions that you approve of? People with a lot more talent than any of us have been banging at that problem using the mechanism of religion for thousands of years and you see what a shitshow that is. The expectation that someone's going to do better than that is unreasonable.

In some ways, one of the real problems with blockchain technology in general and cryptocommodity communities in specific is that they trade on religious fervor without any talent for it, all the while promising the equivalent of "prosperity Christianity." If you believe, God will make you rich. If you believe, STEEM will moon. If you just HODL, bitcoin will carry us all to heaven. All of the problems of the modern era will disappear, all of the un-banked will be rich, all of the fat cats will fall from grace, all of the world's governments will be enlightened, and we will be the shining stars leading humanity into a better age.

Which is transparently bullshit. Always has been. But that's what comes of trying to trade on people's principles rather than solve a problem that they have in exchange for their attention.