So set aside the Larimer thing for a minute. Steemit's poster boy, Jeff Berwick, wrote this:

"How I Made $15,000 in 12 Hours on the New Blockchain Based Social Media Site Steemit"
https://steemit.com/steemit/@dollarvigilante/how-i-made-usd15-000-in-12-hours-on-the-new-blockchain-based-social-media-site-steemit

Now, first of all, if you got an email with a subject line of "How I Made $15,000 in 12 Hours....", you would delete it without a second thought, right?

Yup.

(By the way, when people address Jeff with "that sounds too good to be true" he says "people said that about Bitcoin at first." Which is true, but is also what EVERY SCAM COIN AUTHOR SAYS WHEN CRITISIZED. LOL.)

Now add to it, JEff Berwick, the author of that blog post, I'm not saying he's a scammer, but I did 600 dollars worth of work for him a few years ago, and he still owes me 200 bucks of it. When I asked for it, he said he forgot he hired me, then reluctantly paid me 2/3 of it. When I said to him "you millionaires never pay your fucking bills" he said he was "almost broke."

He presents himself as a jet-setting playboy millionaire though. That's why people pay him for financial advice.

He's also been doing FUD for a decade. Every other word that comes out of his mouth, forever, is about how the US is going to collapse next week and he has the solution to save your money. Including those passports.....

He was one of three people behind this ALLEGED land grab / scheme / plan / whatever....7 million dollars of investor money went missing. But Jeff Berwick and the other two principles all blame each other:

"Atlas Mugged: How a Libertarian Paradise in Chile Fell Apart"
http://www.vice.com/print/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10

Jeff been accused of scamming people out of 30,000 US per person to sell them passports that allegedly never arrive:
https://www.google.com/#q=jeff+berwick+passport+scam

One of those^ is actually video someone obtained that sounds like Jeff actually doing the passport deal thing over Skype with someone. ALLEGEDLY.

etc. etc. etc.

I am NOT saying he's a scammer, but a lot of people say he's a scammer and present evidence. But hey, they're probably all wrong. I know there are a TON of posts on bitcointalk praising his "vision" (a lot from accounts that were new at the time. There are also new accounts praising Steem HARD on here.)

SO.....here's my question: Berwick says he just heard of Steemit and Steem a few days ago and is crowing about it as a lowly user who has no involvement beyond that, but made five figures in a day. HOWEVER

I SMELL INDICATIONS THAT MAYBE JEFF BERWICK IS A SILENT PARTNER IN STEEMIT.

Ian Freeman, another libertarian somebody (who's actually a great guy, and also is the guy who introduced Bitcoin Jesus, Roger Ver, to Bitcoin back when it was easy to mine)... Ian has been on Steemit for a week
https://steemit.com/steemit/@ftlian/steemit-just-got-discussed-on-national-radio-for-several-minutes

Ian is about as popular as Jeff Berwick. Ian said he (Ian) has made about two dollars in a week on Steemit. And it's in some kind of "company store scrip" that he can't cash out for a while until it reaches some threshold.

Speaking of company scrip, I did some work for Bitshares about 18 months ago. Was offered "all now in Bitcoin, or all in Bips" (their "company store scrip", basically sort of stock in the company used early on to pay contractors).

My distant recollection is that I said "how about half in BTC, half in Bips?" and got paid about 200 bucks in BTC, and the other half in Bips. The Bips, I"m told, are now worth about 100 bucks. I wrote a guy there and said I'd like to be cashed out, and they can't remember if I was paid or not.

You could say it's my responsibility to remember, but really, shouldn't a company know if they owe someone or not?

Daniel Larimer, can you please find out if y'all still owe me a hundred bucks, and pay it out of your large share of the premine worth a quarter of a billion dollars if you do owe it to me? I think you do.

We talked about all this and more on the second half of our show tonight, starting 49 and a half minutes in:
http://www.freedomfeens.com/?p=12373

To the hosts, opting out of voting and being proactive in coding blockchain systems which could potentially render the Iron Law of Political Economics impotent is not insignificant.  The act of defection has to be combined with a plan to render the power of the vote irrelevant.