Statement on the centralisation of steem.

Nobody would say that steem was perfect - but somehow it worked and it was decentralised enough. SteemFest4 confirmed for me how a loveable band of misfits from so many walks of life could come together as humans. The recent move to have all the top witnesses controlled by a single party makes Steem untenable for me personally.

History is my teacher

I live in a constitutional democracy. My head of state is the queen, and I remain a committed monarchist because the monarch's powers are limited. In essence, her only real power is the ability to force parliament to get another mandate from the people. I believe very much in limited power. To an extent, the US constitutional system echoes many of the same ideas of balances and limits on power but in a republican guise. The history of how we went from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchs (or constitutions) is a long and bloody one. It often took force for Kings to agree to limit the powers heaven mandated them. In history, a pivotal moment was the Magna Carta, but it was only a beginning. Maybe steem will get a tenable constitution.

Actions

This is a statement on what I choose to do. Make your own choices.

1. While the blockchain remains centralised, I will not post content here. I may post meta content about steem itself. Regular programming may resume if I'm satisfied that steem has become decentralised again. Let's hope steem doesn't become the case study on things that can go wrong with dpos.
2. I am loyal to communities - and there are communities that make their homes in places that I would not choose for myself. I will continue my support of communities as long as communities here remain impactful in the world. To that end; I will continue running: @msp-foundation, @we-are and will look to restart @msp-makeaminnow. I will continue my delegations to community leaders.
3. I will continue my existing obligations to the MAP series of tokens @accelerator, @map10k, @mapxv and @maxuv. We have some exciting developments in the works.
4. Given the current status of Steemit Inc., @we-are will soon deprioritise posts made from their steemit.com frontend. Such posts may still get votes but are much less likely to. It remains up to you what frontend you choose to use. I happen to quite like steempeak.com and e-steem.
5. I am maintaining my vote for the SPS Return Proposal. Reasons are too complex to post here.
6. I am temporarily removing all my witness votes and will instead put them to the less centralised block of witness (currently the 20-50 spots on the list). Should steem again become decentralised enough then I'll start revoting for my old witness picks again. Please don't take the removal of my vote as a sign that you no longer have my support - these are strange times.

Regular witness votes

Here are the witness who had my vote. This record has two purposes: to give an @mention to my old bevvy of witnesses and to act as a record so I know who to vote for should decentralisation resume.
@blocktrades, @roelandp, @themarkymark, @gtg, @steempress, @anyx, @thecryptodrive, @followbtcnews,@ausbitbank, @aggroed, @steempeak, @curie, @timcliff, @actifit, @stoodkev, @arcange, @holger80, @c-squared, @guiltyparties, @coingecko, @firepower, @proxy.token, @dmitrydao, @dragosroua, @qurator, @enginewitty, @stem.witness, @helpie, @patrice, @danielsaori

Intentions

If there is a chain-split, I will support communities on both chains - at least while it is resource-efficient to do so relative to the real-world impact.
Too many other ifs. I play poker - don't show all my cards. Steem on.