thank you very much for your explanation. I will try to read into your articles.

Yes agree, Steem is of course not a futarchy, more a big nothing-at-stake voting scheme, where a few dictate what good content is. Its is in the nature of "stake"/ token stacks. I remember a study of mathematician Odlyzko, that the value of the internet comes from the interaction and not from the content anyways. Steem is nowhere near rewarding the most communicative pieces of content.

I know such localism only from systems like Scuttlebutt and Urbit but more from an infrastructural point of view. I can barely imagine how value distribution happens in such a patchwork environment. As far as I know systems like Utopian with bottom-up established networks are not really used by people - "too cypherpunk" for most I guess. And it lags the big, attractive honeypot which blockchains are.

Without reward-pool, you have pocket-to-pocket tipping, I guess. Otherwise usage of such a system would be one big "disagreement on rewards".

I know similar discussion about a individual "decide what you want to see route" vs. authoritarian "this is what you are allowed to see" but haven't seen any concrete decentralized solutions.