RE: This Proposal Is An Attack On SBD... Sound The Alarm!
I'd much rather they experiment now and learn things early on then not experiment and be forced into a corner later when it's too hard to fix them (again, see Bitcoin).
The problem with threatening SBD now is precisely that it may become too hard to fix that error later.
Replying to your earlier comment:
but until the platform grows and there's the potential to create a viable marketplace for SBD, it's just kind of a tease right now
This is a classic chicken and egg problem. Such a marketplace will never be developed on the premise of serving a customer base that does not exist. Since paying SBD out to users even if they are just going to cash it in is basically harmless and nearly costless as described in the post (while developing a marketplace with no customers is neither), this is a case where the egg (paying out SBD to users) must come before the chicken (marketplace and other commerce involving users)
I agree, and it's why I'm a fan of the SBD (though a little selfishly sad the interest rate has gone down, though I do get the reasoning behind it).
As to it being too hard to fix, I don't know about that. If a marketplace with STEEM (as an example) didn't work out, I'm not sure why they wouldn't be able to re-introduce SBD? I'm talking about something I have very little experience on here, and I know you have been very active in supporting the peg. If you feel even discussing this is reason to raise an "alarm" then I'm misunderstanding something.
Debt always creates some risk. Not too long ago @bacchist was freaking out (from perspective) on the amount of debt being too high and encouraging people to burn their SBD and/or go full SP on payouts.
At some point it seems to me like every change (even a discussion of a change) creates dramatic alarms. That's too emotionally charged for my tastes. Discussing ideas is a good thing, and we should encourage ideas and changes while the platform is small, and mistakes are easily fixable. If we get things wrong, it won't matter anyway because the platform won't grow to the point where enough people really care.
Either way, thanks for chiming in, @smooth. As I've said before, I greatly appreciate the work you've done to make the SBD peg work.
Because it would be much farther along with more competing interests and justifiable reasons to not want to make major changes. That is the nature of these systems as they mature, as you pointed out in your comment above. Keeping an undefined "beta" label on it indefinitely does not resolve that issue.
Take that in context along with "sound the alarm!"
That said, what was the debt ratio when that was happening? I suspect a lot higher, in which case freaking out may have been somewhat reasonable. We've learned a lot about how to manage the risks, including taking action well before the debt level reaches the previous high levels (as was not done previously), and I'm convinced now that it is quite manageable. Yes not zero cost or risk as you correctly pointed out, but quite low.