It may come as a bit of a surprise, but I didn’t hold any value in the concept of community before coming to steemit. I’m an anarchist through and through, and while to some that can be viewed as isolation, I feel that it’s more about rejecting the established society and doing my own thing. Steemit is my first positive involvement in any form of community. Today I thought I’d discuss why I feel that is, and how steemit is different from the established mainstream societies of the world.
If we look at the economy of steemit as its own thing, it’s clear that it has a unique structure. It can be viewed as a gift economy, which incentivizes kindness to a degree. The kinder we are to new users, the more likely they are to stick around and to bring on more new users, therefore steemit increases in value over time. There is also an incentive for large stakeholders to vote for other users and get curation rewards, even though I feel that those are not properly balanced at the moment. I firmly agree that the concept of curation rewards is sound. Fundamentally, we create value and get back what we put in to some degree. Ultimately we all succeed or fail together.
I personally view the state of steemit at the moment as an anarcho-capitalist community where we are pooling our resources, talents, and skills together to create a new form of wealth. The wealth can obviously be pulled out of the community and taken elsewhere, but there is incentive to keep it inside the community and create more wealth for ourselves and others. If we look past our personal opinions and disagreements about key “bad actors”, it’s clear that we as a community have the potential to do a lot of good for the world. I’ve already personally witnessed the community come together on multiple occasions to change a user’s life over medical issues. It’s pretty amazing.
All of that said, why do I think this community works differently than the societies that we all live in? It starts with the removal of scarcity mindset. Sure there are still users that are hoarding STEEM and SBD and trying to use it as a vehicle to get rich quickly, but there is also a core community of like-minded individuals that want to see everyone succeed. They want to be able to give anyone with an internet connection and a compatible device the opportunity to earn a livable wage. They want to help out to the best of their ability. In my personal life, steemit has been amazing at helping lift the veil of a scarcity mindset. We really can do more together. We are already changing the world. It’s all already happening and there is no more “some day, maybe” about it. This is the value that I see in community. Namaste.