I find it interesting that people's votes constitute greater and lesser values on Steemit.
Democracy trends toward maximizing participation, and participation exhibits its most interesting and useful effects when all nodes are "the same" in everything except "accidental position in a hierarchy." (A neuron near the top of a neocortical column may well carry "more significant" or "more general, system-level" information, but it carries/transmits that information in exactly the same way that a neuron at the bottom of the column would, given the same inputs.)
For the prior reason, this is why Steemit fails to win adherents: new adherents don't give their full brainpower, because it isn't worth their time.
The very first time a new adherent wins 85 upvotes and makes less "estimated money" than they "made"(won) with fewer upvotes, they intuitively view the system as a scam.
It's embarrassing that apolitical sites run by socialists or other types of collectivist are likely to get this "more correct" (correct enough to win big) than Steemit.com
Networks whose responses at the component level are not predictable are likely to remain too small to exhibit the extreme benevolence of emergence. (The type of benevolence that makes visiting a site like Steemit worthwhile, based on the prospect of potential payout.)
The obvious way to win is to start with several million dollars in bitcoin, and do everything according to network laws, laws of psychology, laws of politics. --In short, to unite so many disciplines that those disciplines are unlikely to co-exist under one skull: even though an "optimal" way of doing such things is well-known by hundreds (and maybe thousands) of people on Earth.
Getting the initial variables correct is vital. At any given time of day, it's essential to reward participation according to effort, the way a market does. Markets reliably reward X amount of work. If few people want to do X amount of work, then the market increases the pay for X amount of work, or the work is deemed "not worth doing."
The great irony is that stupid Chicago Democrats seem to understand this better than free market advocates on Steemit do.
Hence, "one man, one vote" + "we all have to live with the outcome" = "It's worth enough participating for enough people to participate to yield emergent outcomes."
Now, Chicago is stupid, coercive, and malevolent, because the fundamental nature of the emergent network is assumed to be legitimate (it's not) ...but the benevolent level of "democratic processes" that they possess would be enough to make Steemit the next Facebook. ....And Steemit lacks even that level of commitment to democracy. (In fact, Steemit appears to have ZERO dedication/commitment to democracy; instead, it has a conventional "popular libertarianism" Mencken-like hatred for democracy.)
Zurker was disabled and attacked by the competition in a way Steemit.com could not be. But it wasn't enough to save Zurker, and Zurker is in "the graveyard of almost-good-enough executions of almost-good-enough ideas."
Steemit will soon follow if they don't figure out sortition well enough to survive.
If one reads this post in good faith, and wants to salvage Steemit, I recommend the book "Out of Control" by Kevin Kelly. It's free online, at his website, http://www.kk.org.