RE: But Anarchism is LAWLESS CHAOS! Clearing up some common misconceptions about Voluntaryism/Anarcho-Capitalism.
Today is Freedom Day, or Juneteenth, in America, the day blacks celebrate finding out they had been freed by Abraham Lincoln in his Emancipation Proclamation - two years after the speech.
I will point out that government is an agreement. You govern yourself all the time, every day, even at the point of a gun. Guns exist, and groups with guns exist. Before guns, sticks, and after guns, who knows?
Coercion will always be a part of human society, as long as humans run society. It is much of the basis for our interactions, because we are basically coercive thugs. You may be less so, and some of us may agree to be less so.
We don't need other group's permission to form groups.
Steemit is based on a debt based currency, votes, which are castable at will by curators and deliver wealth to content creator's accounts - or prevent others from doing that, in the form of a downvote.
Steemit is a plutocracy in which 99% of the rewards of creation and curation go to 1% of the accounts. Tomorrow HF19 goes into effect, and will cease squaring the power of wealth in votes. The best estimate I have seen is that 93% of rewards will go to 7% of accounts.
This is not an egalitarian system, and it likely never will be. It is potential however, to be free of coercion, if only votes were apportioned equal power. Today Steemit is controlled by wealth alone, and guns don't matter.
The concentration of wealth inequitably is inherently unjust. While the post market economy is coming, we need a better system than this in the meantime.
Anybody agree that we need a platform that allows votes to be equal in disbursing wealth?
I do not think that vote value should be independznt of the amount of steem power you hold. In the end, that would mean that there is no reason to hold sp. We would all cash out, seeing steemprice plunge to a mere fraction of what it is today, and a vote would be reduced to the same meaningless value as a like on youtube.
In a fair society, your wealth is the result of your contributions to that society.
"I do not think that vote value should be independznt of the amount of steem power you hold. In the end, that would mean that there is no reason to hold sp."
That completely ignores the value of Steem as an investment. Steem as a currency is based on the success of the Steemit platform. What grows that platform increases the value of Steem, regardless of it's value in curation.
The value of anything is driven by thecdemand for it. The demand for something is driven by its use, and sometimes in the short run by speculation. Right now the only use for steem, is that it can be converted into sp, which gives you power in this community. Sure here and there you find someone on this website offering something for steem, but practically all its value lies in its abimity to give you power in the community. And im not only talking curation rewards for yourself, but the ability to reward good content with more power in the community.
Of in the future you get a network of goods and service suppliers who accept steem, only than will it have any other value.
I understand your point about equality and all, but go and take a look through the commenting dection here and on youtube. Which is the most productive of good meaningful conversation? That effect is created in part by the kbowledge that simply posting insults at someone else could hurt your account if as much as one whale where to flqg you. Something you do not get with equal voting power for all.
I disagree that you would not get civility without inequity. I think that possibly offending people that can upvote you is just as powerful a mechanism as any based on downvotes.
The difference is that downvotes can also be used simply to cause harm. Upvotes can't do that.
You mistate value. Value is not merely a reflection of demand, but relative to demand and supply.
Steem can be converted to BTC. Steem has value outside BTC, or Steemit, in myriad ways that are beyond this discussion. However, in the basic sense, Steemit is the justification and creator of the value of Steem.
That value is not only that it can be disbursed through voting, but that Steemit is incentivized, which makes it the only supply of incentivized social media platforms at present, and there is a demand for this. As long as Steemit is the sole supplier of this market, it will create value in Steem. This is a far greater driver of value in Steem than voting. It is not that Steem only has value as incentivizing votes, but rather that as votes incentivize creation and curation, the underlying currency gains value.
Competition in this market is coming. This matters because the silly games that Steemit potentiates to concentrate wealth are widely and rightly perceived as unfair, and people like fairness.
Platforms that are more fair will succeed at Steemit's expense, should Steemit not rectify this problem. This is the supply side of value, because as Steemit fails, Steem will fall in value.
I supposed supply and demand was implied when I wrote demand. I agree that both are important, and right now, supply is being held low, because many authors choose to keep the steem which they earn. I would guess that the amount of steem which is for sale outside of steemit is fairly small compared to the amount of steempower.
That being said, I agree with you that perhaps better systems which are perceived as more fair might exist.
I am following you since this exchange: it would be interesting if you could write a slightly more elaborate post (as a stand alone post) on how you see equal voting power work for the good of steemit, and how you think people will feel motivated to keep their steempower in such a system.
Because that is what makes it incentivized, the fact that you can be rewarded for good content. If everybody dumps their SP, because they don't need it for their vote weights, and new users don't buy, because they don't need it to increase their voteweight, I believe the value of steem will crash. If 1 steem has a value of 0.00000154$, no-one will feel more incentivized than by a like on youtube.
It's great discussing here though. THis kind of discussions would have gone to the stage of a shouting match 3 posts ago on other social media.
"THis kind of discussions would have gone to the stage of a shouting match 3 posts ago on other social media."
And THAT is why I care a great deal about Steemit. I very much believe in the power of conversations like we are having to expand understanding, and create a foundation on which is built a better world.
Apparently all my doom-saying on HF19 is FUD, and I could not be gladder about that. I'll have to continue to watch over time to ensure that things are actually more fair, but that seems presently to be the common perception.
This will be the most important test: author rewards diversification. Author rewards are the vast majority of all rewards on Steemit, and, because of how wealth impacted votes, were concentrated in a mere handful of accounts before now. If that number increases dramatically, I might even completely accede that the problem of perception of unfairness is gone.
Not likely, but conceivable.
Thanks for the follow! I hope I am worthy of your attention.
Amen.
Please speak for yourself, here. In my experience this is not true, and anyway, if you do believe this, why would any government work? I mean, it's always going to be comprised of thugs. Thugs to govern thugs?
"Government is like fire, a fearful master, and a terrible servant." - Geo. Washington
"Let the people be armed." - Thos. Jefferson
I could go on, but the point is made.
I am not a coercive thug. Are you?
God, I hope not.
TBQH, the sum of human interaction is incalculable, and we prolly apply various pressures unconsciously in our intercourse. I can consider coercion to be limited to physical threats, or expand the definition to include implied threats of social unacceptability, or financial manipulations.
Viewed in that light, an honest person might find that it is not whether we are coercive, but to what degree.
I dunno, but I am deeply invested in allowing people to run their own lives, races, and mouths. Like you, I am not interested in any form of bullying, and find people that tend to the practices of confrontation and intimidation both unpleasant and, in the long run, void of most profound beneficence.
It is that latter quality I find most attractive in myself, and in people. Kindness is rivaled only by humility in how I value others, and desire to exhibit myself.
I earnestly hope your question doesn't imply I am!
Haha. Not at all. If I am not mistaken, you said it in your comment above. "We are coercive thugs."
There are already platforms that do this: Facebook, Youtube, etc. Want to guess how much your vote is worth, as well as everyone else's? You guessed it.
Concentration of wealth is not unjust. Wealth inequality is only unjust if that wealth is the result of actual coercion, and no, withholding work from someone is not coercion. Working to keep yourself from starving is not coercion; that's the state of nature. This is true offline as it is on Steemit. Nothing on Steemit is built on coercion.
Inequity in wealth is only unjust if it results from coercion, or results in coercion. FTFY
There are myriad posts on Steemit complaining about how wealth is being used to oppress. It's not news, and neither my opinion, but a simple fact.
Other platforms mentioned do not deliver wealth through votes. Zero is not some. They are therefore irrelevant to this discussion. Competing platforms will soon exist. Thimk.
Nature is unjust.
Just read the posts of @krnel to see how linking wealth to votes is working out. Hint: it's not.
This kills the Steemit.
No, there are a myriad of posts on Steemit that mistake what oppression is. Steemit is an entirely voluntary system, and all interactions are consensual on here.
Those platforms aren't irrelevant to the discussion, as they illustrate why wealth distribution is not egalitarian, nor should it be. Disincenting people from investing more time and effort will almost certainly result in a race to the bottom, with less quality and less engagement. This is one of the reasons socialism and communism are doomed to fail; equal outcomes for unequal inputs always results in a net negative.
If nature is unjust, why are you arguing for so-called justice? Why the push for egalitarianism?
I seek justice precisely because I am not merely an animal.
You correctly point out the likely results of Steemit continuing to allow financial concentration of power in the hands of very few accounts. Isn't that exactly what happened last July?
What happened last July is proof that Steemit is voluntary, as people quit volunteering. They left. In droves. That's why HF19. HF19 will likely improve the situation by orders of magnitude, as currently 99% of rewards inure to 1% of accounts, and this (best estimate I have seen) will change to 93% of rewards will inure to 7% of accounts.
When automation does all work, as is coming, will you still advocate inequity?
Unless and until automation can draw creatively from the world around it to produce literature and art, it won't do all the work. Secondly, automation does not preclude ownership, so as long as people exist, inequality will continue to be a thing. No two human beings are equal, and no individual is equal to himself at any two given points during a single day.
Exactly. The platform is voluntary. Ergo, there is no oppression here. Your sense of justice is strange and warped. You can't violate the laws of reality, and the reality is that people aren't equal. They're not equivalent, interchangeable units.
Why does literature and art necessitate work? Food, shelter, communications and transport require work, and all are potentially automatible. Art is just fun.
If you're arguing for a world in which the owners of the robots ride golden escalators, while mere plebs live on Soylent Green, it is clear why you yearn for such a world. Once the market is no longer necessary, neither is wealth. The post market economy is coming.
While people are not interchangable, their rights are. You have no more right to open your mouth than I, regardless of our relative wealth. That is a reality Steemit has failed to mirror, and has cost Steemit already, and will cost Steemit further, until Steemit fixes this failure.
You claim that because participation is voluntary that oppression cannot occur. This is patently false. "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
It is not I that am some malformed intellectual creature because I argue for fairness. People may not be equivalent units, but people have a plethora of common features and needs, and are equally endowed with rights.
We are not the same, but we are equal.
Art is work. It's the expenditure of time and effort, as well as scarce resources. There is no such thing as a post-market economy. I'm not arguing that the owners of robots will be some magnificently wealthy 1%ers, so you can drop that strawman in a field somewhere. However, as robots will be owned until they become sentient (and likely surpass us as the next form of life on this planet), they will be property, and they will be owned, which means private property, and thus the market, will never disappear. This is the same nonsense that post-scarcity folks try to peddle.
The only right you have is against aggression. The only universal right every individual has it to have their consent respected. That's it. Voluntary interactions - exchanges that honor that consent - are not coercion, and they are not oppression.
You're making a lot of assumptions that have no basis. Art is not work anymore than is sex. Either will meet the overly broad definition you pose of work.
The owners of robots presently are more wealthy than those that don't own robots. Unless the situation changes, they're going to remain so, and golden escalators are an actual thing that exists today. I am arguing that in your model those capitalists will be fabulously wealthy 1%'s, because they are right now.
What I am also saying is that as automation deprives the 99% of income when the 1% own the robots, the 99% are going to take the robots away. This will happen unless the 1% begin to share that wealth more equitably, which is why UBI.
There are no examples of a post market economy because automation hasn't made it yet. Do you suppose that automation isn't going to replace human labor?
Let me be the first to welcome our Robot Overlords! but srsly, sentience has nothing to do with it. Greed and fairness do, and once people see that automation provides for all human needs not dependent on intercourse, they will make the system fair.
Fair will be equal, and since robots aren't paid, money won't be needed. People won't need money for anything, because robots don't need to be paid to do work. Markets will be irrelevant.
But that's besides the point. You completely ignore history in stating that voluntarily entering into a relationship that features coercion isn't possible. That statement has no relation to reality.
The quote I posted from the Declaration of Independence says so, and provides reasons why. You just say otherwise, without any reason at all. You claim we only have the right to oppose oppression. As far as I know, you are the only person that says so, and you have no basis for saying all the other rights we do possess don't exist.
I have a right to prove what I'm saying is true, and a responsibility to prove it if I'm saying it.
You do the same.