First, thanks for the thoughtful comment.

As I briefly mentioned elsewhere, I was originally drawn to this whole circus because I was interested in the Internet of PEOPLE, 25 years back; fascinated by the concept that the technology enabled us to connected with humans all over the globe. To be perfectly blunt, I didn't give a shit about the technology and welcomed the day when people stopped gushing over "The Internet" and instead started focusing on what we can do with the Internet.

Blogging (aka "content creation") was always about human stories. I won't deny that it's convenient that I can look up how to install a new compressor in my fridge, but it's not why I am online. It's also not why I joined up with Hive's predecessor. You might recall that Dan Larimer's original vision was actually very human centric rather than technology centric.

Do I like the ideal of abundance and creative ways to enable wealth distribution? Absolutely! Sadly, I also recognize that a significant percentage of the population "behave badly" in the face of the potential for financial rewards. But it's not a Hive-centric issue, it's a human issue because we live under a "Scarcity paradigm" to associate their very humanity and sense of self-worth with the size of the pile of "stuff" they can amass. And so, something like Hive comes along, and immediately there will be those who will try to "game" a system that's already based on the gamification of "social."

Thanks to partially absentee parents, I spend much of my childhood living with my older aunt, surrounded by 30+ acres of private woods and meadows, where I befriended the natural world significantly more than my peers... which is why (for example) all my blog posts and articles remain illustrated purely with my own photos... again, my experience, not a generic image bank's. But that's a sidetrack; your description of your own upbringing brought it to mind.

I'm really glad bidbots did not end up destroying everything; I was definitely among the many who "almost quit," on account of their presence. But I didn't because I believed the core community here would persevere in ensuring that Hive 1.0 didn't just become an automated shit show. Now the system exploiters are exploring AI... because system exploiters are everywhere; I recently watched this same battle rage on an art related site/community I'm part of.

AI is a tool. The question is how we use it. A gun is also a tool. Do you use it to hunt rabbits and deer so you can eat, or to shoot your neighbor so you can take their stuff?

I suppose that leaves us with the ultimate task of how to change an overall mindset away from the whole "money for nothing" ideology... and that might be a tough nut to crack.