Why There Is No Such Thing As "Draining The Reward Pool" - Compassion versus Crab Mentality
This morning I wrote an article about draining the rewards pool and why this a wrong perspective if you want to understand how Steemit, as a platform, works. I tried to explain the economical dimension of this confusion, describing the rewards pool design and how the value of it is not fixed, but variable and, what’s more important, how this value can and should be influenced by the members of the community.
The article seemed interesting enough for quite a few people, and some of them expressed interest in the second dimension of this perspective, the philosophical one. Initially, I wanted to publish this second part tomorrow, but then I realized I didn’t write anything for my 30 days challenge today, so I decided to use the challenge30 tag as an excuse to publish it today.
Let’s take it slow, by defining the two terms in the title.
Compassion?
Try to remember a difficult situation from your life. Some hardship that you had to go through. Maybe money was short or maybe you had some health issues. Then somebody came and helped you. Maybe gave you some money or took care of you and you got back on your feet. Remember how you felt that time? That’s gratitude.
Now, do you remember when you did the same thing that person did for you and made someone else feeling better? Maybe supported a friend through tough times or maybe took care of a person in need? Remember how you felt that time? That’s compassion.
These two terms, compassion and gratitude are very closely related. Unfortunately, they are also heavily overused, regurgitated and inflated in many areas, from religion to psychology, thus making them almost meaningless. They’re used in so many contexts and they’re overloaded with so many different connotations, that it’s almost impossible to get to the original, intended meaning.
Compassion, simply put, is the wish for others to be well. That’s it. Nothing more.
Crab Mentality
To make it simpler, I will just quote Wikipedia here:
“Crab mentality, sometimes referred to as crabs in the bucket (also barrel, basket or pot), is a way of thinking best described by the phrase, "if I can't have it, neither can you." The metaphor refers to a bucket of crabs. Individually, the crabs could easily escape from the bucket, but instead they grab at each other in a useless "king of the hill" competition which prevents any from escaping and ensures their collective demise. The analogy in human behavior is claimed to be that members of a group will attempt to negate or diminish the importance of any member who achieves success beyond the others, out of envy, spite, conspiracy, or competitive feelings, to halt their progress.”
Compassion versus Crab Mentality
There are two ways in which the rewards from the rewards pool of Steemit can be distributed.
The first one is compassion, or the wish for other people to be well, and the second one is the crab mentality, or the wish that nobody ever has more than you do (or nobody gets to the top of the crab pyramid).
If you act from compassion, then you redistribute whatever you have to other people, based on your own assessments. You literally give from what you already have. Some people may get less, some people may get more, based on how much you want to give at any moment, which depends on: how much you have, how much you feel like giving away or how much you value the future recipients. Believe it or not, that’s how whales are acting on Steemit. They are actually giving form what they already have. They act from compassion.
If you act from the crab mentality, you take out from whatever people may have and try to redistribute it based on the fake principle of equality. All people should get an equal amount from the reward pool (speaking in political terms, this is also known as communism). In this case, there is no value assessment. Everybody gets the same amount, no matter the value of their contribution. Fortunately, this is not happening (yet) and I hope it will never happen, because…
Because, in the long run, the crab mentality will block the entire platform. If there’s equal pay no matter the contribution, it means there are no incentives to increase contribution at all. It also inhibits feelings of compassion in the members of the group: if everybody is getting the same amount of rewards, then everybody should be happy, so why wishing for their happiness in the first place? Of course, nobody is happy, but the equal amount of everything you get is inducing a false feeling of safety and/or satisfaction. Also, the crab mentality weakens individual initiative and inhibits free will: why trying to get to the top, if you know you’ll be dragged down by your peers?
Even if the decision of someone who is giving from what he ore she is already having to somebody else may seem incorrect to us, it’s the right way. This decision stems from a valid point of view, the wish for others to be well. Even if there are hidden agendas or interest groups, even if a whale is supporting the same writers again and again by auto-voting them, and so on and so forth, the underlying principle is valid. It keeps the whole mechanism functioning and that means the processes have a chance to be reviewed and refined. Because it's working, the mechanism has a chance to be improved.
The alternative, the so-called equal stake, will block the mechanism entirely. It’s an utopia. It didn’t work at the social level, back when it was called communism, it will not work at a social media level.
Never did and never will.
image source - Pixabay
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
this is a pretty transparent straw man argument. I have yet to hear anyone who has actually argued for equal stake.
And I think the ad-hominem aspect of your argument is a pretty crappy generally.
At the end of the day, no matter how much you impugn the motivations of people who who want to see the reward pool go to quality content, the effect of the current distribution is clear. Fewer authors posting on steemit, fewer visitors coming to steemit, fewer people buying less steem. Declining price and declining interest. that is not a recepie for success.
also, those are lobsters not crabs.
The wish to control the rewards before they are created, by implying some sort of "fair balance" is part of the crab mentality and has nothing to do with wishing others to be well. It has all to do with wishing well for oneself. I'm not refuting an inexistent argument, so the straw man qualification doesn't apply.
As for my ad-hominem aspect of my argument, can you please direct me to that specific place in my article where I talk people, not ideas?
You have the right to believe whatever you want about the world and how it works, and so do I. We can safely agree to disagree.
As for the price of Steem declining, I see an horizontal like since October, in the $0.14-$0.24 range. Which is not bad. At all. I also don't see declining interest or fewer visitors coming to Steem. I will waive my "experience" card at this point, and based on that card, I will dare to say that building a community, in the real sense of the word, takes at least 2 years. We're not even fully in the first one with Steemit.
Thanks for your contribution to the discussion :)
P.S. The fact that they are lobsters (which, by the way, although coming from a different group of Decapods, are closely related to crabs) blows off my entire argument. You got that one right. :)
Your refutation of one-man-one-vote, and the comparisons to communism, which is not an argument i have ever heard made or taken seriously, is a straw man. The rest of the above paragraph, about the 'crab mentality and wishing each other well' is nonsense. You sound like the gym teacher from Donnie Darko.
An appeal to motive is a type of ad hominem. "people argue for such and such because theyre jealous and don't want others to succeed" is an appeal to motive. Its a fallacy for the same reason as any ad hominem -- because its irrelevant. It would be just as much an ad hominem for someone to say "youre just saying that because youre greedy
the numbers (on alexa, and in the daily statistics posts) contradict what you see. Going to $.24 in october to $.14 (4 or 5 cents off the ATL) is not moving sideways, its moving down.
I lived 19 years in communism. I know how it looks. I recognize the potential for a similar type of organization (in a group or a country) when I see the intentions of the members.
But I also understand that somebody who has never been exposed to such a lifestyle cannot consider it real.
Came here to say this. Thanks for covering it. :D
actually, we were all wrong. theyre crayfish (realized this at a chinese buffet last night when a girl i was with sat down with a plate of them.)
Good point. IMHO, what we should have is crab mentality on inappropriate posts with compassion on other good posts.
For me personally, when I see someone earn a huge reward for a post I'm happy for them. It makes no difference what kind of post it is. I think it's great all the way around and don't understand what all the fuss is about "draining the reward pool"
It just inspires me to write another post.
That's the spirit!
Great post, very clear thinking and well explained! 😁
Thank you :)
As in real life, to get more out, you need to put more in.
I think the biggest problem I'm seeing is shortsightedness.
and if someone else is doing well, that's not fair.
I was brought up to value hard work and patience. So my plan is to give Steemit a year, all of 2017, and see how things look at the end of it.
Then i will look at what level of reward I should be thinking about, and what the likelyhood is that Steemit will give me that level of reward.
By then I should have posted enough to at least be a dolphin, so that may have some impact on what i'm getting.
Crying at the start of the journey that your feet are sore already is not going to get you there any faster. putting your head down and getting some miles in, will.
True words have been spoken :)
To me this is what it boils down to
eventually they all become proportionally stronger until muscle failure...wonder which crab will give out last?
They all lose.