My friend @nnnarvaez (administrator of the witness @castellano) does not agree with my previous post in which I questioned the "liquid democracy" of steem and steemit. He says he is entangled and that you can understand things that are not. In particular, he emphasizes my change of name from "Liquid" to "liquidity". That was just an irony. But I agree with him that I have not explained it clearly enough. This time everyone will understand exactly how Steemit works and they can put the name they want.
We will quickly see the meaning of the two terms, the meaning of the union of terms and the actual functioning of steemit. Then you will judge.
Democracy
Very simplified One man one vote. The government, either alone or in coalition, is achieved by having the most votes.
The difference with the plutocracy is that in this, the monetary units are the votes, in this case the one that obtains the majority of the support of the monetary units has the power, either alone or in coalition.
Liquid
The power is not taken by periods, but the tendencies of votes vary constantly and if in a moment the support of the vote changes, it immediately changes the ostentation of the power.
Well, we see that steemit is effectively "liquid" because if the support is changed to the 20 main witnesses those who lose their support go out and those who gain support go into that government.
But as the supports are not counted by people but by units of steem power (which is a unit of value) the government depends on the ones that have the most SP, that is, a plutocracy.
The liquid plutocracy of steemit
Steemit is a liquid plutocracy. It sounds a bit weird, it can even be a bit hard to understand. Well no, it's very simple! Liquid plutocracies are the most widespread forms of government in the world and also are not things of the future brought to the present. They are already 200 years old and we know them as stock companies. A vulgar and current company.
Let's go to any company and make the parallelism. Apple vs steemit. Apple is governed by a board of directors (imagine 30 counselors) steemit is governed by witnesses who decide the hardforks (imagine 30 witnesses) in both cases the government is reached by the support of the actions (indirectly by the support of the owners of the actions) in apple are called "actions" in steemit is called "steem power". If an investment group from Hong Kong arrives and buys a large number of shares, these can be enough support to merit being among the 30 counselors. Counselors with less support go out and those from the investment group enter. In steemit, if that group buys enough SP you can have enough support. It will assemble mining computers and the smallest witnesses will come out and enter the witnesses of the investing group. It's that simple.
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And why do we vote?
We are users We buy apple items and use the steemit platform. But if you do not support any apple counselor, why support steemit witnesses? This is the question I asked myself and the answer was to withdraw all my votes from the witnesses. I only use apple articles while in my opinion they are the ones that work best for me and I will only be in steemit while in my opinion it is the best social network for writers. I do not swear allegiance to anyone and if someone brings to the market a product that best suits my conditions I will leave these and begin to consume the new ones.