Fairness on steemit and beyond - you can't please everyone, let alone dantheman
"There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as De Tocqueville describes it, 'a new form of servitude.' „- F.A. Hayek
There has been a lot of debate recently about the direction of steemit. Team Dan versus team not-Dan. And whatnot. I will throw my STD 0.02 in because, well, why not.It's a free platform... Or is it? To start, there is the discussion of fairness. So I will start with some general thoughts on the issues.
Some of the most abused terms in debate are fairness and equality. Let’s address them one at a time.
The main problem with fair is that, just like common sense on common good, there is no clear definition on what is fair and most use a definition or based on individual ideological bias. What is fair for one is not fair for the other, so if you support fairness you simply support your subjective idea of fairness (Me? I think it is not really fair Leonardo DiCaprio hooked up with more Victoria's Secrets models than me) and should not be surprised if others have other ideas.
What is fair is an issue that probably cannot be clearly solved. Furthermore, whatever definition of fair you use, the sad fact is that reality is not generally fair, the world is not fair, but knee-jerk action and screaming about it cannot make it fairer. You will never reach consensus on fair. As the saying goes in the game of life you play the hand you're dealt, aces or seven-deuce-off. You take what you have, and make the best of it. That is not to say there cannot be some authority action in favor of some members of a group who are less powerful, but it has little to do with fairness.
The case of equality is also subject to interpretation. To start with: equality is not inherently good. In the classical sense when they say all people are created equal the meaning was equal in liberty, which obviously all humans should be. They are not equal in the sense of being identical in all respects. No two human beings are alike, and so, by basic logic, they are, simply put, not equal in capability or circumstance or even luck, but these are all part of the real world. Ideological belief that people should be equal in this particular way, a belief with no clear basis in reality. Even if we go by this belief, authority action cannot make people equal.
People naturally discriminate all the time. People make choices and in the process discriminate as to the movies they watch, the books they read, the friends they choose, the people they date. A woman will never be accused of discrimination in a bad way for refusing a man trying to pick her up in a bar, but it is discrimination based on looks, manners, charisma, etc.
What equality can be attempted from a libertarian perspective? Each organisation imposes some general rules as law to balance the rights and freedoms of each individual. From this perspective what can be done for the sake of fairness and equality is that all rules should apply equally to all members of the organisation. The authority should be an impartial arbiter first and foremost.
Some speak of equality of opportunity, but this is also a debatable, depending on definition of equality of opportunity. If defined by everyone will get the same treatment from the authority, this is similar to equality before the law. If defined as substantive equality of opportunity, by all being made equal at a certain starting point in their before “the race” starts, this is not possible. First of all policy cannot change the differences that exist by nature. A whale is a whale and you know ...
Equality most times can only be achieved at the level of mediocrity. You cannot get all students in a class to equal the levels of knowledge and, more importantly, understanding of the best few, as not all have the ability or the desire to do so, but it is possible to hold the best behind to achieve some misguided equality obtained close to the lowest common denominator. Elitist? Me? No, just calling them as I see them.
This can lead to some uniformity which pleases some, but human society thrived due to diversity of people, of experience, of means, of circumstances. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, though who they are is uncertain. It may sound callous, but it is reality.
Equality and fairness can be a meaningless concepts outside context and very easily exploitable. People can be equally poor, equally miserable, equally unfree. Equality does not help in this case.
Will this work for everyone? Probably not, sometime people fall through cracks, but this is true for every system. No one honest promises perfection or utopia.Unlike the Utopian visions, the freedom philosophy recognizes that the system is an “amoral servant” that does not claim to generate no objectionable results to anyone.
Now onto the issues of negative voting ... Yeah ...I got nothing. As long as subjective voters well ... vote, you will not have a perfect system or an equally agreed upon system. You can at most experiment with what you have. So negative voting can be seen as an experiment.
What system best expresses the will of the people? Well the question is, do we really want to represent the will of the people? If so, not gonna happen. Try as we might.
Fairness has not much to do with voting. It will never be fair for an ignorant vote to matter as much as an informed one. But as no one can really decide what is informed and what is not, it may be that all votes are equal is as fair as it is going to get.
Is it fair that @dantheman decides to include a type of voting? Who knows. He is in fact The Man I mean, it is in the name, so it must count for something. In some cases, mot unlike the views of Lord Vetinari said, it is a one man one vote system. He is the man and he has the vote. (but enough ass kissing)
The main downside I see to negative voting is it may stifle debate. People may hide their belief in order not to get canceled. But on steemit this is not much of an issues. Opinions - like assholes - abound. It is a fairly revolutionary system and maybe experiments are what is needed. You never know. Unless you do know. But who does?