The disappearing middle class of Steemit, and how to fix it.

in #inequality8 years ago (edited)

Cap rewards for Steem whales, and distribute the rest downwards.

Put in a maximum reward limit, so that whales dont snowball everyone else out of existance.

Bots and early adopters do not great authors or curators make, however ingenious their programming.

We have a chance to avoid some of the pitfalls in our current society. We should take it.

If new users dont get rewards, there is no incentive to stay. If steem whales flood the markets, which have little depth already, theyll cause massive volitality and cause the price of steem to crash.

Im talking about improving distribution to improve the entire economy. As it stands, things aren't looking good.

I'm just concerned about the mathematics of the rewards system. It's all very well to talk politics, but if someone has 2000000 STEEM power, and they double it every year, while you double your 200 how much do you think your STEEM will be worth in a decade from now?

What if Steem whales just vote on their own posts?

These are questions worth asking, and a discussion worth having.

It is in all our best interests, including the whales, that the principles of a STEEM economy are sound.

bern

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I dont think the fix is socialism but it should have limits, golden age in capitalism since end of WWII until 70´s was the most regulated age, when rich paid up to 90% of his wealth, the things started to go wrong again when they said only "free market" and you can see how economy is going following this rule of free market

insiders and polically linked getting richer and the main street getting poorer.
We live in a limited planet, all things must have limits

Try telling that to Sweden. It is not socialism that made them great and thrive. They were smart and for a long time kept their socialism out of the market.

I'll give you a source for my information:
http://www.nassauinstitute.org/articles/article1372.php

EDIT: In fact Bernie should read this and do some research so he can get his facts straight.

i am not speaking about socialism i am speaking about put limits for avoid abuses, only that, i only suggest to study the algo and try to get a way to get happy early users and new users

What abuses? Who is getting hurt? If they are there we should address them. Limits don't always fix abuses, they sometimes mess everything up. Especially, when people try to fix something before it is proven broken.

I only say that economic efficiency & social Equity must be balanced and it means limits, if you are interested you can read more about it in this link https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/JEF2012BalancingEconomicEfficiencyAndSocialEquity.pdf

i´m going to read the link you have provided me i hope you do the same with this

I feel like this is the sort of thing that should be voted on as a community, but when a select few hold the majority of power (like the 1% of wealth in the USA) how can you have a fair vote? It's a conundrum that to this point I don't think has been answered, but people have their votes small and large and some trust will be needed to help the community thrive.

Because they can't hold onto that power here. You are comparing this to things that have existed before. Nothing like Steemit ever has.

As soon as one of those wealthy people upvotes something they immediately impart substantial value to that upvote. I went from 11 steem power to over 200 today from a few such votes. None of my other posts have been so fortunate, but it does show that you CAN'T sit on the power and horde it here. If you take any form of action here it shares it.

Yes, you can. My steempower balance rises constantly. It's designed that way.

Oh yes it does. I've refreshed some Whale's wallets.

It doesn't go up near as fast as if they use it though.

And since when is it your right to tell another how they should act with their money, time? If they want to sit there... so what... how does that hurt you or anyone here?

As far as I can find out it doesn't hurt anyone. It might inspire envy in some people, but that's all I can think of.

Fuck off socialist. This only works because capitalism.

Steem economics bear very little resemblance to capitalism. In capitalism, workers produce commodities for sale on the market. In Steem, authors produce posts which are not commodities. Objects with no exchange-value are not commodities, even if they satisfy human wants or needs (ie, even if they are bearers of use-value). Steem is a lot closer to a gift economy than a market based economy.

Have a nice day. :)

I just gave you an upvote because I feel sorry for you. You are now a socialist. Buahaha.

Some flattening of the structure must be implemented...100% true. Or else, the 1% will dominate the discussion, the message and take out all the fun out of this.

Fantastic discussion here, fellas. I'm going to be covering a lot of these issues in the coming weeks in my series on the game theory of Steem. I haven't gotten to the parts about how we evaluate whether it's too top-heavy or not, but keep this in mind:

One of the central goals of Steem is to foster a wide distribution of cryptocurrency. As such, I don't think that the typical capitalist argument of "the rich shouldn't be told what to do with their money" is even really that relevant here. The rich (and I mean the very rich) are here specifically to build the system and keep the barriers low so that the distribution is wide. From that perspective, the incentives do feel a bit top-heavy at the moment.

On the other hand, were any of you around when Bitshares was first started up? Dan and company did WAY too much tinkering with the incentives there, so it became very difficult to keep track of how the system worked, and I think we failed to learn lessons well because no one incentive scheme stuck around long enough. So for now, I think we need to wait and see how things play out.

The problem with all forms of distribution is that none of them can really be fair; mining launches go to the people with the most hardware; presales go to the people with the most money.

If you distribute all the coins to a everyone at the start, however big the group may be, there will always be latecomers who will feel that they got left out.

It really is impossible to satisfy everyone!

At least on Steemit you can work your way in by starting with nothing, you can't do that on bitcoin or any other crypto, never mind the technological hurdles and steep learning curve.

I started from nothing and am pretty pleased. It takes effort on my part, but overall it is really cool. The biggest problem I have with steemit is that I need to do other things and I feel myself sucked in here. I have a game launch I need to finish some work on so we can release it on Steam. :)

Screw that... free market is why this place works. If you want to kill it, bend it over and ram socialism up it's..... >>> you get the point. :)

The person responded to me and then apparently deleted the response before I could add mine:

Here was my response.

If they say something useful and attract someone with steem power they'll get rewards you can't believe of. You'll know it when it happens. The people with massive power cannot horde it here. If they vote for a post here they immediately award a lot of power and money to that persons posts and within 24 hours they will receive it. This happened to me... I was at almost 11 steem power. I am at over 200 now. The bulk of that came from one post of mine. One vote brought in $43.

So unlike wealthy people in the world, whenever someone with steem power takes action anyone they take action to vote on is awarded VERY well, and anyone that replied to that and had votes from people is as well.

Socialism is not needed. It does not work.

Listen, I'm not poor. Look at my wallet. I deleted my response because I decided to update my post instead.

I'm just concerned about the mathematics of the rewards system. It's all very well to talk politics, but if someone has 2000000 STEEM power, and they double it every year, while you double your 200 how much do you think your STEEM will be worth in a decade from now?

What if Steem whales just vote on their own posts?

These are questions worth asking, and a discussion worth having.

We can speculate...

So far it doesn't seem to be an issue. When they post, reply, vote everyone will keep going up too.

It is hard to say if the inflation of steem power will cause problems or if the pace of other things will keep it not an issue.

I do know most of the wealthy I checked out have power down enabled.

I don't see negatives on how much they have at the moment. It has had no apparent negative effect, only positives up to this point.

That doesn't mean it won't change. I am not one to propose haste fixes to something that is not yet proven to be broken. If there are problems that is when we should address them.

That would leave room for a competitor if there are problems and they are not addressed.

I am going to read the link you provided now:

https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/JEF2012BalancingEconomicEfficiencyAndSocialEquity.pdf

Apparently there is a limit to how many nested replies you can have on steemit. I'd like to see that fixed. It makes it difficult to have deep conversations.

I followed this from the comments of the girl make up video…
As I am a bald 45-year-old, I can't compete with boobs… This video generation takes advantage of Attractive Privilege.
We have to learn how to take advantage of this ourselves… Brain Privilege .

I'm not sure what the answer is, but usually the whole idea of 'all boats rise' comes to mind .

It does frustrate me too, but I would rather find a way to benefit from it. If you find a way let me know…

Okay I read it. I will need to think about it some more to make sure I've completely thought it through. I do have some initial thoughts and I may change.

1st - This is a form of economics I believe attempts to justify certain actions while ignoring actions that lead up to the situation. These actions are important because they do not exist in steemit (currently). So many of the economic conditions that are rife and inequality of wealth are not due to hording they are due to those that horde paying off law makers and changing things so that it becomes easier and easier for them to do so. They also pass wealth redistribution laws with loopholes or where agencies involved in the redistribution are subsidiaries of theirs so they benefit from such actions.

I can see doing things like this if there are problems. On steemit currently there are no such problems other than envy. No one is being starved or hurt by the whales.

I also have an article for you related to yours:
https://mises.org/blog/social-expenditures-us-are-higher-all-other-oecd-countries-except-france

It goes over some of the information on the OECD. I haven't finished reading that one.

As far as inequality. IF I bust my ass and get people to vote for me and I spend hours voting, and I start to get rewarded for my work I certainly am not going to be a happy camper if socialist redistribution crap kicks in and other people are rewarded the same as me without putting forth any effort.

One thing I think kind of sucks, but is NOT hurting anyone is the whales using bots to follow and vote on certain people. That does make the trending page kind of worthless. You are correct at that. I tend to look at new, and recommended more than trending.

AND since this is in beta they could make changes. If you can show me someone being hurt by something then I'd be more inclined to back taking action, but I won't likely be endorsing the OECD route. I don't see most of the countries in the world as doing very well when it comes to economics. They love their fiat currency. I tend to agree with the economists from places like http://www.mises.org more than those that have been in charge and not doing a good job of it.

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