I was going to comment on that here, but decided to let someone else do it first since my post count has been so high. My specific comment said something about the 80% premine with something like 40% going to a few guys on the inside. As far as I know from smooth's posts, that only 40% of the 80 - 90% "pre"-mine was allocated to free signups (and if their dysfunctional voting system doesn't cross the chasm, they will never reach to 20 million signups allocated which thus increases the insiders' relative portion of the "pre"-mine to greater than 40%).
Also the apparent 80% attrition rate means most (32%) of that 40% of that initial "pre"-mine will be unspendable (lost) money, thus decreasing the effective money supply (
and market capitalization but coinmarketcap.com doesn't appear to realize this) increasing the insiders' share of the "pre"-mine to greater than 50%.
AlexGR, I should have wrote about this "lie" on my "Lies about Steem and Steemit".
Let's see it this way: Do I get any FB, twitter, reddit shares for posting? No. Do I care who controls their shares? No. Why would I care about who owns steem? As a user it doesn't matter (I have never bought steem except as a trader, so I don't see it as an investor).
Only for investors do these things matter and even then, we know that they are backing projects with ICOs, premines, centralization etc etc. They'll do their due diligence and invest accordingly.
You'll notice that a very significant portion of people joining Steemit mention the idealism of blockchains and how it could improve matters. They are planting some of their dreams (the hindbrain will tie this all together with "give me money!" and "we are speading love") in the idealism of "decentralization" (nevermind that they never study the fact that Graphene isn't so decentralized).
Blockchains are an inevitable outcome of technology. When large databases can fit inside a mobile phone storage cell, there's no reason why you would have only 1 central database to serve the world. That made sense in the 80's/90's and 00's but it will not always make sense.
Let's say we go to 2030 and storage capacities that are normal are in the range of 50-100k TBs for a hard-disk equivalent technology that'll exist then. This type of storage would be sufficient to hold a lot of data currently held in centralized storage. Then you start questioning why is central storage and processing necessary and why is the middle man necessary if the sizes involved in these databases are so "small" that they can replicated the world over, multiple times, with simple equipment. It's that simple.
So, naturally, text/number based records will be the first to be blockchained. Images and especially videos less so - but it could happen if there's a leap in storage and processing.
I wouldn't be complaining if the insiders took maybe 5 - 10% and had it locked up until they issued the free signup accounts (validated as real humans who did not abandon their accounts). But the insiders get theirs no matter what happens on the follow through.
Even if it started with an equal distribution, the shares would quickly accumulate because the poorer shareholders would be lured to sell in prices that thought were "OK". They'd be trading what -to them- are useless tokens worthless for their day to day survival, with btc->$$$ which have tangible RL impact.
And then people would again complain about the distribution which is so heavily in favor of the big stakeholders etc etc. It's the same story repeating over and over. Why? Because of the reality of wealth inequality and the priorities of life between those who have less money, more money, and ...a shitload of money that can afford buying facebook apps or games for tens of billions of $$$.
Remember: People were selling their BTCs at 10-20-30-50-100$ and thought they were getting a great deal.