I have been on steemit now for 28 days and in that time I have really enjoyed speaking with a lot of the members here and commenting on some fantastically well written articles. There are no doubt some amazingly talented men and women sharing their thoughts, feelings and so much more on the platform and I am quite sad that I will not have the opportunity to have discussions with them in future.

I would like to take the time to mention three in particular who have made my short time here very enjoyable.

Firstly, @creatr, who I have found to be an extremely pleasant and helpful member who took a lot of time to converse with me on some very important matters and in my experience has been very kind and honest. I will not stop searching for what I am looking for my friend and I thank you very much for what you have done for me.

Next we have, in my opinion, one of the most underrated writers on steemit. I do only have limited experience, having been here such a short time, however I did get the chance to read quite a few articles during that time and whilst many were fascinating and full of useful information, none were written quite so well or had such insights as those written by @tarazkp. Whilst also being a fantastic photographer and teacher, it is his writing style and the manner in which he approaches his subject matter that has really impressed me and while I will no longer be a member after this post, I look forward to following what @tarazkp has to say in future as I am sure he will have a fascinating insight into whatever it is he chooses to share. Thank you Taraz.

Last but by no means least is @apolymask. The thing that impresses me most about @apolymask is his thirst for knowledge and his willingness to share it, combined with what I believe, is an excellent critical thinking process. An interest in etymology introduced me to this very friendly member and I really enjoyed speaking with him regarding this subject and touching briefly on others. I would very much have liked to spend some more time talking with @apolymask. Also in my experience a very polite and friendly steemer who always took the time to reply to my comments even when I know he was very busy researching and creating content. Thank you very much for all of your time @apolymask.

I would also like to thank @dreemit who has been very friendly also and made me feel very welcome here but who I did not have the opportunity to speak to as much as the others, unfortunately. Thank you so much!

These are all MY impressions and are based on MY judgement of MY experience!

So Why Am I Leaving?

As I mentioned, I have enjoyed my time here very much. I think the idea in general is a fantastic one but even before I joined up a month or so ago, I had my reservations and these have been added to in the short time I have been here. I believe strongly that everything in life has a positive and negative. When weighing the positives and negatives of steemit, I can only come to one logical conclusion in my own thinking. This is a negative in the long term.

I will quite honestly admit that my knowledge of blockchains, crypto-currencies and other related subjects is extremely limited. These are subjects I don't really even have an interest in at the moment but I feel I will soon have to have some knowledge of themas I believe they will, unfortunately, have a major role to play in the future of our world. Certainly at the moment I don't share the optimism that so many others seem to for a brighter future due to the introduction of a cryptocurrency based monetary system. I see many negatives in this that some would be wise to consider. I believe myself to be a simple man and in a world that seems to want to over-complicate every single minute detail of our society and our lives, I believe that sometimes it takes a simple man or woman with a simple point of view to see things clearly.

I am not saying I am this man, just making a point that the simple answer to any question is almost always the right one and if we hope to have a better future, in my opinion, we need to start looking at the simple things as well as trusting our instincts.

So what's my problem?

Well, a small part of my problem is that I don't see much difference between the online steemit community and the 'real life' everyday community I see when I walk outside my front door. I want to live in a world and a society that is truly fair and truly beneficial to all. I don't see that in the physical world or society I live in and unfortunately I do not see it here either.

The real world I live in is controlled by those who have the power to control it and steemit also suffers from this. The term whale is a familiar one to most who will read this and if we had the right amount of money in the bank we could all become one of these if we wanted to ......but we don't, so we can't.

In real life the whales are those who decide what is and what isn't good for the community and sit in judgement of our 'wrongdoings' and the same role applies to the whales that have the power here.

Who knows who the next whale will be and what they will decide is and isn't good for the community. The more money they have the more steem 'power' they can buy and more control they can ultimately attain. This has been the way of things for so long.

There may even be one or two whales who feel they are influencing things here for the better but influence is still influence on a platform that ideally is supposed to be about fairness and equality of opportunity.

I also don't believe, as many suggest, that the content on steemit is of a higher quality than any other social media platform. Whilst there is definitely a lot of great, original work on the platform by both new members and older members alike, there is also a shit load of material earning some members who have been here a long time a phenomenal amount of money which is of average or low quality by comparison.

It seems the ability to network and increase earning potential from the 'rewards pool' is more important than the ability to provide quality content for some. I don't see this trend changing.

Some have compared steemit to a pyramid or ponzi scheme and I think it would be intellectually dishonest to say that at least from the outside looking in, that is not what it 'appears to be'.

Those that join soonest and take advantage of the early start will make the most, those who come after will progressively earn less and less with the earnings for those who joined early and even invested, rising and rising as more members join and follow the popular members in an attempt to gain popularity and a big enough 'following' of their own to make some money themselves.

This is a generalisation ofcourse but it is definitely something that has to be considered.

''Don't worry!'', I hear you cry, ''We're still in beta. This will all be sorted out soon.''

You are most probably right. My scepticism can be overpowering. Time will tell.

These are not the only problems I have with steemit, however and are actually the least worrisome. There are bigger things to worry about in terms of the long term possibilities for a cryptocurrency like steem and a platform like steemit.

For a long time the world seemed to me a very confusing place and I found it very hard to understand why things were the way they were.

Why is there so much suffering and poverty in the world?

Why do we treat each other so badly?

Why do we need to spend our lives working hard with little reward?

Why do we all think so differently?

Having taken the time to investigate some of these questions I find myself having a different outlook on the world to most other men and women. Rather than seeing it the way I used to, as a dark and dangerous place where no-one was to be trusted and terror lay around every corner, I now see the world as a beautiful and magnificent place with all the wonder it held to me as a young boy.

I ofcourse realise that there are dangers and dangerous people in the world but when you come to know who or what your enemy is and have some sort of understanding as to motivation, fear seems to fade and be replaced with a need for change.

Not a desire but a need!

There are lots of things I have been told in my life that have turned out to be less than truthful and I'm not just talking about Santa Claus.

Whether you believe it or not, our societies operate in a different way than we think. The state does not have your best interest at heart. The police do not exist to serve their local communities. The school system is not here to help your children learn about the world and open their minds. Your taxes do not pay for public services and maintenance of infrastructure. The medical industry does not exist to keep us healthy.

There are a multitude of other things that are not going on in and around our world for the reasons we are told they are. Most of us are unaware of these and many I feel would not have the inclination to care. It is very hard to get someone who benefits from the way society works to admit that the society has issues as it would threaten their perceived benefit.

Would you be willing to make changes to your society if in doing so you thought you may be in a worse position as a result?

So I am not a big fan of our modern societies and how they are being operated to increase wealth among the already wealthy at the expense of the hard work and labour of those who are poor. This has been the way of our world for atleast as long as I have been here and this is the only period of time I am qualified to comment on, so as far as I am concerned it has always been like this and I for one would like ti to change very soon.

.The society that I live in and its 'leaders' do not represent me or the way I think it would be best for us to live together and so I choose not to adhere to its 'laws'. I believe myself to be a good man trying to get better and I do not intend to and would not want to cause harm to anyone else so I feel no need to interact with that which I do not consent to.

So if I can see 'society' for what I believe it to be and choose to have no part of it, why would I then choose to become a part of a 'community' where I see the same failings? The community structure in steemit is set up very much like the upper, middle and lower classes that we have now in the'real world'. The system at steemit, whether intended to be changed in future or not is currently set up to send the majority of the 'rewards' to those at the top, just as in our modern,' physical' societies.

I know that many of the users on steemit are well informed and have anarchistic leanings so I would imagine that the fact that we have all been living under a tyrannical system for a very, very long time is not news to anyone who might read this. If you can accept that then you might also accept that in order for this to be the case either we must be really, really stupid or they must be really, really smart. My own position may be that both of these statements hold true. For too long they have taken psychological advantage of us and have always been one step ahead. So failure to consider that this might also be the case now is disingenuous and dangerous in the extreme. For those who believe that a cryptocurrency based system is the key to our freedom, I would like to ask you if you have ever considered the fact that perhaps this system could be a replacement for the current, failing one?

Have you ever considered that perhaps you aren't as smart as you think you are in identifying all the possible areas of future risk and corruption?

Have you ever considered that there may actually be others out there with a better knowledge of this system than you and the ability to take advantage of it to suit their own goals?

Have you ever considered how this transition might affect those men and women who only know how to deal in cash and earn their living by doing so?

While the fiat system is a long, long way from perfect it is a means at the moment whereby one man or woman can deal with another man or woman without having the involvement of any kind of third party or record of the transaction. With blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, everything is recorded and this itself can be a source of abuse in future,

There has to be a new system in place before the old one is allowed to fall and at the moment all of the talk is of how cryptocurrencies will save us all. How an electronic economy can help us get rid of those nasty politicians and bureaucrats and keep the taxman away from our money.

Do you really believe that those who hold the power in the world today are simply sitting on their hands and watching the clock?

Everything is looking good for Bitcoin, Etherium and Steem and for anyone looking at these things now with the capital to invest, they definitely look like they are pointing towards a future trend. I would imagine that over the next few years this bubble will continue to grow and some will even do very well in the meantime. This is an attraction phase and whilst the fiat system slowly but surely and obviously begins to crumble most will turn to cryptocurrencies and for a short time it will seem that perhaps a decentralised world may have the chance to appear but in my humble opinion, something will happen that will mean that cryptocurrencies become the only show in town and when that thing does happen, make no mistake, those who are in power now intend to be in power then and already have their plans in motion.

With unlimited funding and access to the brightest minds straight out of universities from around the world is it really that fantastic to believe that all this time the cryptocurrency markets have been manipulated from behind the scenes to make it appear that they are an attractive positive to a society rather than a negative.

Remember I said that I believe everything has a positive and a negative so the negative must be about here somewhere.

Perhaps we are just not clever enough to see it or so blinded by our own interests that we don't want to.

Some of you may have heard of the term Universal Basic Income. It has been banded about now for the last few years by those who propose that very soon in our future, with the increase in robotics, artificial intelligence, 3d printers and many more such wonders of the modern world, there will no longer be the need for us mere humans to lift a finger in the production or manufacturing processes. So it may be necessary to introduce a universal basic credit for all due to the fact that there will no longer be enough jobs for all of us to do.

Everything is going to be just great.

We'll be able to do nothing but consume and enjoy leisure time with friends and family or do whatever else it is we would like to do.

The trouble is, I don't quite see it that way.

For me, a possible dystopian future awaits in which, without the need for physical labour to produce the food and other necessities which are required for life, (as well as the things that are not necessarily required but that we just really, really fucking want) we will find ourselves as recipients of this Universal Basic Income.

My view however, is not that it will be a benevolent gift but rather it will be payment in the form of credits for doing pretty much what a lot of us do already. Providing our information to those with a use for it.

That is the world we live in today and I see it being a big part of our future, 1984 style.

The world we live in today exists on social media and blog posts, status updates and upvotes. Likes, shares and resteems. The difference is that at the moment it is somewhat of a choice.

We can choose to interact with social media for the time being.

We can choose whether or not we are on facebook and provide Mr Zuckerberg with all of our personal details and lifestyle information or we can choose not to.

But in a world where there are very few manual jobs due to the advancements in technology and a broken fiat financial system, with all the misery that will entail, would it not be prudent for those in power now to maintain their power into the future by offering the opportunity to all of a universal basic credit?

The only proviso is that you must demonstrate your eligibility for this basic credit by proving that you are an upstanding citizen and member of the community.

o how can this be done?

How can a person prove that they are an upstanding member of their community and loyal to the society in which they live?

By sharing each and every aspect of their lives online for the world to see....and judge!

You see those in power enjoy very much sticking the knife in and love seeing us build and maintain our own prison. It is not simply enough for them to judge. There is no fun in that. The fun is in getting us to judge each other and determine whether our own are rewarded. To see us fight and squabble amongst ourselves for our own piece of the 'rewards pool'.

Perhaps we might have to show our community spirit by taking part in local projects and uploading photographic or video proof, or perhaps there might be a points based system based on our provision of evidence that we took part in any number of state approved, socially accepted activities.

Or perhaps we will have to stand on our heads and bark like a dog.

Who the fuck knows?

What are we willing to do for our 'reward'?

For those of us not willing to give up our principals, dignity and self respect and living in a cashless society, things could get a little hairy. Any dissension would I'm sure be met with penalties and restrictions.

Don't want your children vaccinated? Boom, basic credit denied!

Don't want an RFID chip in your right hand? Boom, basic credit denied for you and yours.

So if we don't play the game we don't eat, we can't find adequate shelter, we can't live.

A Brave New World indeed!

So why don't I stay and fight the system from the inside if this is what I believe?

Well, this isn't what I believe.

It is simply an observation made in comparison to previous observations that have led me to speculate this possible conclusion.

I have no idea whether I am right or wrong and sincerely hope that my observations are mistaken or my fears unwarranted but whilst everyone is caught up in the positives, I thought it might be wise to point out some possible negatives for those who may have overlooked them in their excitement at all the money they are making......or not as the case may be.

So why am I leaving?

I'm leaving because I feel the possible negatives outweigh the possible positives and under such circumstances I don't feel comfortable in being here. I see no reason to trust the platform. It doesn't represent the fair community that I would like to be a part of.

Not yet.

I like the idealistic views that a lot of users of steemit have and would enjoy sharing my thoughts and feelings with others here if I trusted the actual platform itself but I see it as a possible evolution of information gathering and trend analysis that I feel is another stepping stone on the road to total control, if abused.

Many of us see this platform as the opposition to centralised government and the financial control of the banking system but we would be wise to remember that the best opposition for our enemies is one that they can control.

I hope that if nothing else you have enjoyed reading what I have had to say and if possible you have taken something away from it.....even if that something is that @tonyr is one crazy ass mofo. :)

I wish everyone here all the best and ....thank you!

@tonyr