great stuff @samueldouglas - as a philosopher feeling grumpily that i have to get to grips with the dismal science, steemit is a microcosm where all the problems i'm seeing jump out out at you at high speed. here are my not very coherent thoughts thus far: people can game any system and they will. at the same time, altruism is a force in any economic / cultural system, though as a 'percentage' of the determining force, it can get very low or very high, [taking a historical / anthropological sweep]. misalignment of incentives, so that people maximising their gains by exploiting the incentives provided by a system are also acting in ways inimical to the system's achieving its declared aims or even continuing to exist at all seems the norm with most systems. [e.g. capitalism treats waste as an externality that can be dumped without expense into the envrionment, thereby degrading the conditions that capitalism needs to continue, i.e. life on earth.] the aim here at steemit, i presume, is to provide the conditions for 'good content', of use to people, to be produced and distributed, in a way that rewards content creators so that they can create, and which removes the economic exploitation and ideological dominance of middle men - the publishing industry, tin-pan alley, hollywood, FB etc. Also, it seems that steemit hoped to broaden the base of content providers so that anyone can express themselves in the space. Though this latter isn't directly about getting good content, it can be thought of as a maximising condition for good content to emerge and for new creators to hone their craft etc. It mitigates the elitism that might grow out of the concern for 'good content'. Of course, there has to be the means in place to maintain the infra-structure on which the system sits, and economically, this costs. Questions arising now: what is 'good content' and who is to say? Can a system be optimised just by tweeking parameters? Thoughts: game theory has a very thin idea of culture. Rich, complex culture, including ethics, however, is bound to be an influential vector in any ecosphere/economy and that is where we have room to manouvre past the mechanistic and probably hopeless game of tweeking parameters. [e.g. print more money!] Culture building is a must here IMO. Communism? Hell yes. Not Stalinism, Trotskyism or even Marxism - but the 'naturally occuring communism' without which ordinary human life in communities would not be possible.