RE: Steemonomics: Competition, Cooperation, and Complementarity
Thanks.
You raise a valid point. Indeed, the Steemit system of voting and rewards does not constrain the consumers' expression of their preferences as much as a true market economy in which currency (or real money, but that's so rare these days) is the medium of exchange. This of course means that signals conveyed by voting on Steemit will have more noise than the signals conveyed in a free market economy.
Still, the value of a vote depends on how much Steem Power the voter holds, and frequent posting or voting temporarily reduces the potency of ones votes. In any case I think its interesting that Steemit at least rewards the posting of content valued by other participants, more so than for example Facebook, where the only rewards are comments, likes and shares (popularity).
The more popular a Facebook post is, the more "likes" it will receive. So we can quickly discern how popular a post is simply by looking at the number of times it has been "liked". What if Facebook gave more weight to the "likes" of the people whose posts were the most popular (received the most "likes)?
Elizabeth Warren is a congressperson. Why? Because she received more votes than her opponent. In other words, Warren is a congressperson because she was more popular then her opponent. And because Warren was more popular than her opponent... the weight of her vote in the public sector is far greater than the weight of our votes in the public sector. We don't have votes in the public sector.
Warren was rewarded for her popularity. The size of her reward (power in the public sector) provides an incentive for people to be just as popular as Warren.
What about Steem? Does Steem incentivize the creation of valuable content? Or does it incentivize the creation of popular content? I don't know how it can possibly incentivize the creation of valuable content. The only way to do so would be to allow people to spend their money on content. We don't have that option. Therefore, Steem incentivizes the creation of popular content. Because... there's a shortage of popular content? That's the problem with society? The problem with society is that "politicians" (broadly speaking) need even more power and influence?
There's nothing inherently wrong with votes or "likes". The issue is when we can't compare the popular answer with the valuable answer. When we can't see the valuable answer... then society is guided by the popular answer. I don't want society guided in the most popular direction. I want it guided in the most valuable direction.
I certainly want the politicians to have less power, not more. Steemit, by providing a free and decentralized forum, will I think do more good than harm, maybe even a great deal of good.
Individuals do routinely pay to publish and advertise, which does effectively promote ideas and products. As far as I'm concerned that is as it should be.
I'm with Hayek in disliking the term 'society'.
You can dislike the Steemit system as much as you please. I only wonder why you bother to participate if you find it so undesirable. Why not start a service selling space for publications an ads?
I really don't see how Steem is more likely to do good than any other similar website.
Why did Hayek dislike the term 'society'? Which term did he prefer?
Well... I'm just disgruntled with Steem because I got tricked... The Economics Of Steemit. I was hoping that it was fundamentally different from all the other places where I write stuff... but it really isn't. It's just another popularity contest. You have to dig and dig and dig to find valuable content.
Your story wasn't bad... but you're definitely not striking at the root of the problem. Which is a shame because you seem bright enough. The root of the problem is that people don't understand the importance of accurate value signals. Mark Perry recently posted a decent article about the importance of accurate value signals. Just now I posted a blog entry trying to persuade a respected journalist about the importance of accurate value signals.