The Steem itself can be viewed as a social experiment of a 'state' where 'sitizens' do have an almost complete ability to distribute 'taxes' everyone is paying, and even to do that without any middleman aka 'goverment'.
( The 'Reward Pool' is actually rather a 'taxation' on every Steem holder)
The result of this experiment do not live much space for optimism, it looks like the desire to increase one own short term gains is so far ruling.