RE: The twelve million dollar miner: who is @freedom?
This is an interesting point, Steem is unique for blockchain tech. If somebody owns 3% or 20% of Bitcoin they actually have no more power than the guy with 1 bitcoin nor the guy with 0.1 bitcoin. This is because the only thing you do with bitcoin is hodl and spend. For Bitcoin the centralization challenges are about miners and devs, not coin owners.
However, Steem is very different. How much STEEM you own results in how much SP you can have, which is very accurately called Steem power because it does make you powerful and famous on the network. The ability to flag means you even can control future rewards if you have enough SP, effectively muting another person's voice and ability to financially gain on the platform. Additionally, you can influence who can and cannot become a witness, putting the witnesses in your control.
The other issue we face is that Steem draws in people of incredible differences in view. While Bitcoin and Ethereum tend to draw in the libertarian-capitalists and the economic speculators, Steem has those guys but the defining camps are more like: 1. Meritocrats, 2. Techno-Tea Party. These ideologies are absolutely in conflict with each other, as one group wants the blockchain to maintain a status of content purity and the other seeks an economic revolution.
The best suggestion I've heard is that the oracle idea should be a sidechain that allows absolute purity from spam and other junk for global archiving of human knowledge, while Steem as the main chain is allowed to be more flexible.