Respectfully, I do not agree it is a shared collaborative commons. This mentality (again, I say this with respect) is one that I believe keeps Steem from success. Please allow me to make my point that Steem Power is not a shared collaborative commons, thus the inflation pool is also not a shared collaborative commons.

I find that Steem attracts a weird mix of ideologies that conflict with each other. Its trying to gain importance through appealing to traditional private investment and at the same time its trying to claim the reward pool as public property. The reward pool is not public property though, it belongs to those that have purchased Steem Power and those they decide to give it to as well.

Now, I would be fine if it did become a shared collaborative commons, but that would require Steem to make SP more about a resource credit economy than what it is now. I would say that Minds.com is a shared collaborative commons design, and people seem to enjoy it quite a lot.

Under the current design, I argue that the most logical way to look at the reward pool is as interest for stake, much like a CD. Only, in this example the CD itself is capable of being worth more than the initial investment and so the person depositing the value into the CD will support people that appear to be making their asset worth more.

When I look at Steem I see a new kind of bank account that gives me interest in multiple ways and a feature that allows me to improve the value of my stored money's buying power by contributing some of my interest toward someone or some project that can increase the buying power of my money. That's a very cool bank, but it gets better. I can retain all of my stored value but provide authority over the distribution of my interest to some other account for all kinds of benefits, creating a cool thing called the delegation economy. Now, I don't even have to buy things, just give away the authority over the distribution of interest.

Some may not like this but that concept is an entirely capitalistic design and Steem aims to use capitalism to achieve its objective of sprawling the internet.

I care about equality and I would love to see something kind of like a "shared collaborative commons" and I think SteemBasicIncome is doing a decent job of trying to make that happen on Steem. However, the reality of Steem's design is that it depends on investors in a very capitalistic way. Buyers of property have full right to their property, and capitalism is about protecting people's rights over their property. So, I argue that the owners of Steem Power have the right to do with their power whatever they want, because they paid for the right (read: not a privilege).

Somehow, Steem attracts demonetized/censored content producers seeking relief from Youtube/Twitter and also attracts authoritarians that want the power to shut certain ideas and actions down. It seems to attract the capitalist and the socialist alike. People want Steem to be a Twitter/Reddit with $0.50 rewards for memes and quick posts, while others want Steem to be this sacred and pure oracle of humankind's collective wisdom. Steem suffers from an identity crisis and I think that is the real problem.

Steem knows it needs capitalistic-minded investors to make the reward pool worth more than just monopoly money, but then it wants to tell those investors that the reward pool is a "shared collective commons" that belongs to those meriting a reward in a meritocracy. The problem with that is that to a private investor this is confusing and crazy. In their mind, they bought the Steem Power, and they have a right to their "power" and what they want to do with it.

So, I suggest that it is an illegitimate claim to tell an investor that they voted on something they should not have and stole from the pool. They purchased their votes and those votes are now their property. It shouldn't matter if they vote on an article so beautifully designed that Medium would be jealous or a silly cat picture that is original content from another site.

Steem lost Dtube because of that "original content only" mentality. Reddit is a place where one can share content from another place, and yet Steem"it" trying to imitate the design of Reddit doesn't allow this due to that "sacred oracle" argument. And I have personally seen Cheetah abusing perfectly original content from reputable sources such as @jsecoin that is on Cheetah's blacklist simply because they didn't jump through Steemcleaner's hoops to prove authenticity. The world doesn't need to see an organization use Steem to create an internet police state.

Downvoting allows someone to weaponize their stake in Steem to hinder someone else's stake. It does not only hurt content creators, but also those that voted with their purchased stake. In its current design it is also a might-makes-right design, which is not good for drawing in new participants. My largest concern, however, is my fear that downvoting will worsen the negative behavior we already see online.

Weaponizing money is not likely a good idea. Many nations would likely continue happily using USD for international negotiations, but after the US began using the dollar as a weapon to force their political ideals on other nations, gold and Bitcoin began to look attractive. The same can happen to Steem... Would you prefer investing in a network that allows richer people than you to have power over your earnings and harass you, or the place that gives everyone the positive vote for things they like?

Karma is a dapp on EOS that removed the downvote (if I recall correctly) and it was something I took note of immediately. Steem might face rough competition if other platforms provide a more pleasant experience.

All this said, I do believe we have plenty that we likely do agree with each other on. And I think that if you review the things that I write you will see that equality and the ability for a common forum are important to me. Honestly, I have made suggestions that would turn the reward pool into something I would call a shared collaborative commons. I think turning it into a common reward system would be very good, my argument is just that it is currently in a very weird mix of opposing concepts and for this reason discourages investors.

Steem needs investors to work, but it also discourages investors. The way to make the reward pool an actual shared collaborative commons and incentivize investors is to give both what they want by separating the two groups and their rewards.

Steem Discourages Investors

Investors do not want to curate, they want passive income, ROI. But we're trying to force them to be active, which is crazy. We're trying to make them have a worker mindset when they have an investor mindset. We need them because their financial investment gives value to the reward pool, making it something worth earning for content producers. We don't need them to work, we need them to stay.

Steem Discourages Content Producers

Content producers are not investors, they are workers. We are likely not motivating the Tim Pools and Joe Rogans of the world to be active on Steem likely because, while they have money, they are not of an investing mindset but a worker mindset. Steem is failing to give them what they want by trying to make them become investors. They just want to work and earn. We don't need them to invest, we need them to work.

Steem Discourages Fans

Fans are not investors, fans are readers/viewers. Once again we're trying to force people to be what they are not. We have a frustratingly unaccommodating sign-up process that requires a substantial investment for us to be able to support the content producers we like. Why would anyone bother? Donating satoshis with Bitbacker or USD through Patreon is easier. Fans don't need to be investors, and our dreams of economic world domination is not going to change that.

A Solution

I have been excited as much as everyone else by the idea of SMTs, but at some point I realized they are almost completely pointless. They are not completely pointless, because some projects will get Youtube big and want their own reward system and that's where we can keep them within the system. However, most projects won't get big enough to be able to provide enough value to the holders of their token.

The currency STEEM has a great potential for being a universal internet currency. While big social sites will likely go SMT, small communities will want to earn STEEM, which they can rely on for having a value.

So where is the solution?

Investors prop up the value of STEEM by purchasing STEEM and staking, not curating as the audience. A robust resource credit economy can incentivize investors to buy and hold SP in order to generate RCs for selling to content producers needing RCs to post to the blockchain.

Authors can be motivated to pay for RC delegations in order to receive access to Steem upvotes from fans. This system puts the financial burden not on fans but authors seeking profit. This is a more palatable approach because we know that content producers will spend money to make money.

Forcing internet audiences to become investors to participate is not going to work if the goal is mass adoption rather than a small investor's community. Would McDonald's be making money if they required customers to own McD stock before buying a burger? That just doesn't work.

Audiences need a much more approachable way to participate. Cutting down fake accounts are important, and although difficult, not impossible. We need it to be easy for audiences to upvote what they like.

Upvotes need to be equal in order to truly be "wisdom of the crowds" as some people claim Steem is. Also, to make the reward pool a true shared collaborative commons we should adopt Minds.com's approach to their reward pool. Anyone with an account can upvote content, which is also tied to a hash of a phone number to discourage bots. On Minds.com resteems, upvotes, follows all add to the "network value" that the content producer provides to the network and the tally of these actions taken on a producer's content results in a reward matching the value they add to the network. That is what I call a shared collaborative commons, my friend!

Step 1:
Investors want scarcity, if it were up to me, I'd cut the inflation down to 1%. This alone would motivate massive buy-ins from investors, making the SBD value of that 1% hugely profitable for content producers.

Step 2:
I would disconnect votes for reward share from SP staked and give every account a total of 10 votes they may make per day all with the very same weight. But I would make SP generate RCs that would be necessary for authors to broadcast posts, and I would hike up the RC cost for posts by quite a lot. That way, investors can get their ROI on dlease.io by delegating their SP.

Step 3:
I would separate the audience from all costs except comments and transactions which would need to be treated the same as posts. Resteems, follows, upvotes and whatever other social activities should be free. But all financial transactions, posts and comments should require RCs.

Step 4:
No more curation reward. Its not necessary with this system, because if the audience wants to earn STEEM as well they will need to get enough RCs or have the site gift them RC delegations in order to participate. They get to show their interest in content with upvotes, follows and resteems for free, but economic participation requires RCs.

This design allows us to get a true "wisdom of the crowd" setup, incentivize investors to come and stay, motivate authors to spend a smaller but ultimately significant amount and not ask too much out of content consumers.

All that said, if this idea was implemented the HoboDAO project would have to massively restructure how it would work. So, yeah, I'm cool with staying the course too. ;)