Regarding your questions, I do in fact believe that we should strive to achieve the most freedom we can, but it's really hard due to reasons already mentioned. These social paradoxes have always troubled me. If we don't censor anything, it may cause harm, but censorship in itself may cause harm, so it's hard to find the proper balances.

But this phrase got me thinking about something else:

How does a community without leadership, elected or otherwise make decisions? I guess we talk/fight it out.

I remember my father's teachings, and other people's teachings, about "decisions". If you don't make decisions, they say, they will be made for you by others or by circumstance. In a community without leadership, if we are eternally tolerant, our inaction will count as action promoting the action of others, action on which we will have no control or decision due to our inaction.

We always have preferences. I prefer freedom over not-freedom, but I also prefer beautiful over ugly, and I prefer content that makes me happy rather than content that makes me unhappy. I, therefore, think that we should strive not to "improve" Steem, because that implies that it can be good or bad and those judgements are against freedom. I think that we should strive to take Steem toward the place that we like the most.

This means that in a place without leadership, we must be the leadership, ironically, paradoxically or apparently contradictorily. If we don't act, others will act and we may not like what they do, so to be free and content, we must influence our surroundings toward our preferred outcomes.