Steem is not a blogging platform. Steem is an ad-hoc public and transparent corporation. Let me explain...

I hope that is clickbaitish enough to get some more clicks. I think that more people need to understand what this platform is, and what it is not.

What Steem is not (only):

1. A simple blogging platform with rewards for posts. It is an error in the design that there is such a thing as Curation Rewards at all. This function adds no value to what Steem actually is.
2. Just another cryptocurrency, with a nice blogging platform to promote it. No, the blogging platform is actually a transparent, internal corporate messageboard.

What Steem unfortunately is, at the moment:

1. A blogging platform that big investors can use to game the Curation Rewards system to cream off the Steem that is offered for such a task. This task adds no value to the Company, whatsoever, in fact it damages it, by eating the profit potential by creating a pathway through which invested assets are diverted for the gain of those who have no loyalty to the Company.
2. A Reddit Clone, complete with flamewars, vote wars, and general stupidity. On top of that, because the whole thing is transparent, it is easy for outsiders to peer in and point at things and make us all look bad. Well, if we are being bad, I guess we deserve it. But I think it's just because people don't really understand what the Steem Devs have created, even they themselves don't fully understand. This is something that I am hoping to change by pointing out why these things damage the goals of Steem, and the stakeholders within it, especially those who see this as a way to make a living.

What Steem is, and what it could achieve:

1. Steem is a public, transparent corporation. The blogging platform is the internal messaging system, by which projects can be shared between members. These projects do not necessarily have to be directly tied to Steem, but instead the activities, profitable or not, of members. The ones that are profitable, and boost the public profile and adoption of Steem are the most important, however.
2. If all ways of climbing out of the crab bucket are eliminated (like the aforementioned issue with big investors using vote bots to cream off curation rewards, which I think should be eliminated, because it is diminishing the meritocratic architecture of unequal votes), we can stop the leaking out of the system of funds, which benefits shareholders.
3. Everyone who either invests in, or posts on Steem, is a shareholder. Steem Power is the share instrument. Your holding in the company, like in any publicly traded company, regulates the power of your vote. This is also why these ways of sapping the collective pool, that is, the Market Capitalisation, have to be eliminated. If you are taking money out of Steem, and selling it for other assets, by way of wages, effectively, then you need to also be contributing something. Without curation rewards, big investors, aka Whales, are incentivised to either stay out, or try their hand at contributing something of value to the discourse that helps determine the activity of the Company as a whole.
4. If the abovementioned architectural errors are eliminated, Steem's capitalisation will at worst remain static, or growing. Developing value added products such as applications that interact with the Steem blockchain, is a clear example of profitable activity for the Company, as it will tend to increase adoption and investment. Because you can become a tiny tiny shareholder, for free, in this Company, the idea is that what you are bringing to the Company is your ideas and skills. These are non-monetary, non-tradeable, intangible assets that you can bring in, and add to the value of the Company, both benefiting all Stockholder/Employees, and maybe yourself, by making a job that pays.

I think that when you look at everything, the way the system is set up, and the things that are happening, and the problems, and the poor performance of the Company on the marketplace, currently, you realise that what I am saying needs to be understood by everyone. Steem has the potential to be a powerful economic force. A corporation without a head, with a constantly mutating body, and hands that can touch almost anything, grasp it, and find a way to use it to benefit the group. If enough people within Steem agree, and we can get the Developers to concede we have a point, we could very easily see the market capitalisation of Steem become bigger than Bitcoin's 9 billion.

We could become shareholders in the largest corporation on the planet. We can use the corporation, if enough of us have the access to resources, that we can divert to projects, cause all kinds of awesomeness to happen in the world. We could have a department dedicated to driving adoption, we could create partnerships with other Cryptosystems and DAOs like this, and we could really steamroll the marketplace towards abandoning Central Bank Monopoly Money, and using real money, based on honest supply characteristics and with no single group with enough power to alter interest rates and cause dislocations in the market, misallocations of resources, and the like.

You may not agree with everything I am saying, but I am quite sure that I will be proven right. In fact, my own personal projects, that I am promoting, seeking to find collaborators in, will further increase the power of the platform, creating a realtime communication system, and help, effectively, form a namespace for the departments of the Company. Departments do not necessarily have to make money, maybe the members have day jobs, and fund their Department. But these parts of the group are not as important as the ones that promote the core elements of the system, and do what is necessary to enable the whole thing to grow. With profitable subunits, not only does Steem become the largest publicly traded corporation in the world, it is also a monetary system, and perhaps even a credit and insurance system.

It is precisely the lack of exact definition of what activities should be done within it, that for the time being, Steem is looking like a flash in the pan. But once the right ideas ricochet around in the Steemchamber for a while, the consensus will build.

I am tagging this with #ascensionteam, this is the name of the department I am starting up. We (only me right now, but whatever) are dedicated to establishing the technologies for space migration. Ascension, as in, rising up to heaven. But that aside, as I am saying, we here at #ascensionteam, we recognise that Steem is the way that we can radically change the way the economy works. Steem is like a fungus that has got into the rotting, decaying insides of the world, and it will take that garbage, and turn it into pure gold. The ones whose brains are rotting with this decay, will maybe try to take a swipe at us, but who cares. They can't stop what has been started.

Even if Steem's developers abandon it, there is nothing stopping the users from continuing to run the Company and take it in directions that make sense to the members.

Steem is the beginning of the end of a world upside down. Help build it up and let's take over the world, and set everyone free!