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RE: The Deadpost Initiative - Week 6 - Share your most undervalued work (SBD prize) + week 5 winners
Here is an old post of mine that got some significant discussion, but still never quite reached a $5 pay-out.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@happyme/a-possible-cure-for-steem
I am always on the look out for ways that Steemit can be improved.
As such, while I do not personally subscribe to the notion that the way to do this is to simply equalize the voting power of everybody - I appreciate the effort that you put into this.
I'm seen Steemit from both an optimistic as well as pessimistic viewpoint. Its been a while since I tried to solve this issue - but I absolutely recognize it to be an issue.
Thanks for sharing and please consider this my vote for you. ^_^
Thank-you. I'm fairly new and still have much to learn, so I'm simply throwing ideas out there to be discussed and dissected. I've seen other suggestions for graduated vote power that may work. I think it is important to keep trying to improve upon what we currently have until something is found that makes this platform irresistible. The foundation is already there, so it shouldn't be too hard to tweak it and make it so much better.
I always worry I'm getting in over my head with these things because I don't have a full grasp on the inner workings of steem or economics, but I am quite sure see some things that many with large accounts fail to see or just don't care about because they're set up to win big even if the platform doesn't go in a direction that any of us will be happy with.
I completely agree that upvotes should all be equal. There are problems with this though and I worry I am getting over my head when I debate this with witnesses and large stakeholders, one for example is the ability for people to build multiple accounts and bot armies and the difficulty of regulating this
One commenter was right, that a lot of investment comes from the fact that it buys steem power and therefore voting power. But in the long run a fair platform with this added incentive for investment will become completely unsustainable. The distribution of wealth will be so skewed and eventually the only people able to compete on the platform will be corporations who have the money to buy in, it'll become an SEO haven and many regular users may be completely unaware, just playing the game, hoping to make it big.... kind of a microcosm for society at large with all its same problems intact, perhaps even on steroids.
The thing is, many who stand to gain are too blinded by their own potential benefits or they're pessimistic view of human nature that they think this is bound to happen anyway, they just don't care and they want to be the ones who benefit.
This is why I've switched my focus on steemit from building community that can survive off the platform and begins to converge with others who are not so involved with steemit because we have a ton of amazing people on here at the moment. If I can make some money in the process, great, but as far as I'm concerned, it's the same rigged rat race as everywhere else, we're just here early enough that we may get a little piece of the pie. They're going to have to make some huge changes to get me back to fapping about the platform like I was my first month here before I had a clear idea of what goes on here and I think many of the quality content creators are going to follow suit.
Anyways I don't mean to be a bummer, let's just do what we can do.
Unless you are close to a witness, its kind of difficult to know what is going on with the inner workings because there is hardly any communication from those in the know as to what those inner-workings are. Most of us are simply using the platform the same way we use a computer. We know just enough to make it do what we want it to do, but have no clue how or why it does what it does. I've heard several explanations of what a blockchain is, but I still have a ton of questions about it. For instance: If Steem were to really tank and there was no monetary incentive to run the servers any more, what happens to all that data? Is the Steem blockchain run on completely different servers than all the other crypto's? Does each crypto-currency have its own set of servers? So if all the people running any of the crypto servers decide to pull out, the currency is dead?
Why would a fair platform become unsustainable? I thought it was the other way around.
What I mean is, it won't be sustainable because it's not fair. I'm trying to make a disctinction because steemit could potentially succeed from a money making point of view and still fail most of it's current users by failing as a community, becoming something very different from what most of us would like it to be and very different from what it claims to be. I think this is the most likely scenario, actually.
There is a whole lot of talk about how decentralization is the key to freedom, but if we are still in a currency based system (which for the forseeable future is inevitable), we need to understand that as long as money attracts money, there is no such thing as true decentralization. Some of us will be more free than others, and this is just barely different from what we have in the current financial system.
Actually the idea of smart media tokens COULD provide a way to circumvent this, but its unlikey to as everything is still open to manipulation from those who have the most of whatever currency people want as well as people who understand this stuff better than the rest of us.
Oh yea... you and a bunch more people are figuring it out. I've been harping about the extreme distance between haves and have-nots for quite a while now. It has been a burning question at the back of my mind for several months now: What happens if everyone that is late to the game decides to bail out? Obviously it goes back to where a few get to share the entire reward pool once again. But what is the point of owning a gazillion worthless steem? Who will keep the value propped up? I can't see how simply buying and selling to the same people can increase its value. Somebody must inject and lose something of value in order for others to reap a win. Please correct me if I'm wrong. At this point in time, only another currency can be injected, although there are a very few physical goods that are making their way into the system. If/when lots of physical goods are bought with Steem then those might be able to sustain the currency's value. I believe that is what the developers are banking on.