RE: Whales and the STEEM Blockchain, Voting Circles and More - How Does this Affect the Future? Blockchain Writing Contest
but I certainly know of a few people who do, as it’s quite obvious.
Why not ask them for their reasons directly? Why not name them? The problem, to me, is both a combination of lack of visibility (even in this post about voting rings, you didn't shed direct light on actual examples of the issue) and moralistic judgements before all the reasons are known. I think some people have reasons they think are valid (while clearly others may disagree). I'd like to see more people directly engaging in adult conversation about why someone is doing what they are doing, even if it appears to be something which harms the value of the whole network.
Yes, we might get flagged. I was flagged for 3 months straight by a massive whale. I'm still here. If we're acting out of fear, then we aren't going to contribute much of value.
There's also the simple concepts of greed and envy to consider.
Some people want to use the money they have to make more money. They don't care who disagrees with how they do it, as long as the net result is positive. I consider these people leeches to any community and, IMO, the best defense is to convince them they can have even more value if they worked with the community instead of against it (a rising tide raises all ships and all that). Often these people aren't super rational when it comes to long-term thinking, so there's certainly a limit on how effective this can be.
As for envy, some people see others with wealth, themselves without it, and they immediately think, "Something is wrong! Who is going to fix this!?" They rarely frame it as their own envy, but sometimes that's all it really is. Some people put in a lot more work that others. They actually get more output because of more valued input. Some people have been blogging for 10+ years and so their content reflects that. Others just started and are comparing their beginning with someone else's middle or end. I cover some of this in my relationships, reputation, and rewards post.
As far as I know, @misterdelegation is just steemit. It's not an altruistic whale. That said, I wish more people followed Steemit's example here. If they have enough Steem Power to go around and don't need to squeeze every last drop of profit out of the system in the short-term as they can, then they should delegate to project which will increase the overall value of the network for everyone. They might even gain more profits if that action increases the value of the their holdings. That's rational, long-term self-interest that helps everyone. That's why I delegate most of my witness Steem Power to projects which help the network.
I saw someone else's analysis on what reps users of certain rep levels vote for and receive votes from, and it was pretty telling. Save for a few exceptions most 70+ users mostly vote for 70+ users and receive most of their votes from 70+ users, so even without having to name individual users he basically detailed the fact that most large accounts on this platform do in fact engage in heavy circular voting.
And it's not that hard to see when you look at their vote graphs or even just click on who their recent posts got voted on by and which ones were the largest votes.
I do agree with you both in thinking that the current trend of profit maximization and severe wealth concentration has and always will damage the platform's chances as long as it continues.
There’s another way to interpret the rep voting. I vote for people who I’m friends with and want to support. Some of them joined when I joined and we became friends over time. Humans often clump together in similar economic and intellectual circles. The fact that they vote according to those same patterns doesn’t surprise me. The reputation system isn’t that great, but I do often find a correlation between the quality of the comment or post with the reputation score and that makes sense if more people with stake in the system voted them to give them that score.