RE: The Witness (Circle Jerk) n-Person Prisoner's Dilemma, and the richlist Witness Votes - Some solid numbers for you to digest
First of all, I would like to thank you for having the time to elaborate this list and not overly mention people with "@".
Being a witness, specially a top 19 witness, gives you Steem (money), but most importantly it gives you power to decide on Steem changes. To be a witness you need to be voted upon, so its in essence a Political System. Like any other political system you need to negotiate and make alliances for others support, this results in what you call a "circle jerk", as many witness vote for others expecting a vote back.
In your post, you call "good whales" to those that decide not to vote, I disagree. If big whales do not vote, then they contribute to making the "circle jerk" stronger as witnesses just vote for each other and decide who gets to be on the top 19.
DPOS is not a perfect system, but it is the best system I have seen on all Blockchains, on POW (Bitcoin) or POS (Peercoin), the only thing that counts is your resources to either buy miners or to buy the coin that allows you stake. On Bitshares and Steem you need others support, this results on most witnesses collaborating in projects that contribute to the growth of Steem, they do this to get votes and people vote for them because of their work, we all win.
There is also another fact I did not mention: most witnesses know each other, because we talk about technical stuff needed to run a node, we often help each other when one runs into a problem, so normally you would vote for that witness that helped you out.
What I am trying to say is that YES, there is a "circle jerk", but the reasons for that result are 1.- normal to any political system and 2.- logical because of witness work or previous association with each other.
The only real way to stop this call "circle jerk" is to get everyone to vote, but witnesses will vote for other witnesses and this is normal.
ps: you have brought forward a very interesting subject so I expanded on my answer on a different post: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@chitty/is-there-a-witness-circle-jerk
You pretty much explained how it's a n-Person Prisoner's dilemma in paragraph 2, so, what do you think that means? Go read about it.
You tell me blah blah not a perfect system. Yes, but can you even point at one thing that needs to be addressed?
Also, you are strawmanning the circle jerk. A circle jerk is also an NPD. Go look it up. You are grasping at straws here. You, like most of the top 19 and former top 19, don't realise how such a construct has warped your minds.
Also, it is precisely the fact that you are by necessity friends, that makes it even worse.
I'm not saying DPoS is not a good system. I'm just saying either everyone self votes, or not, and the voting choices of witnesses should either be completely eliminated, or simply by posting update_witness you vote on yourself, and your non-witness voting list is no longer counted, until the witness becomes inactive.
And I make no apologies for posting all those @ symbols. I would only concede to the change to turn them into hotlinks to your steemd profile page. If you paid me to.
If you say, like many of you corrupted people, that it's my stake my vote, then it's my bandwidth limit my words.
I will not be so belligerant in the future about the use of these, since I suppose you have better notification tools than the rest of us.
This was 2 hours of manual labor, by the way. Thanks for asking, in case it wasn't obvious. Next time I post such things it is going to be detailed dossiers of the behaviour of everyone with positions of responsibility and high stake, and privilege, all pulled out of the blockchain, like anyone can do, if they bother.
I actually enjoyed reading your post and appreciated your work, this is why I have followed you, upvoted you and personally thanked you for it on my comment. You did not mention me with @ and only used it on the top 19 witnesses, I actually found this post randomly. So I am not sure why your response seems like you felt attacked somehow?, if that is the case then I do apologize.
I also read your other post on the -Person Prisoner's dilemma, it is interesting as it is social behavior, one that is expressed on many aspects of society and thus very hard to change.
And this is precisely my point, you believe that by eliminating the ability to self-vote, the top 19 witness list will change? I am telling you it will not. You are saying it is not moral and I am saying it inherent to human society and it is futile to rant about it. I also find very dangerous to believe that one morality is above others.
Take notice that this is coming from a #45 witness that has never been even close to the top 19 witness, and the reasons that I have never reached a high position are precisely those that you expose on your post. However, I don’t see a conspiracy behind it and I have seen many new witnesses with a lot of talent go up to the top 19.
If anything will change, it would by whales voting for whomever they see fit, changing self-votes will hardly move the positions on the witness list.
The only way to change it is to change the rules of the game.
It seemed like you were attacking me. I didn't really think much about how I put them there, I am just so used to changing -it.com to -d.com to see the activity log at steemd. So it was in part to facilitate that.
As for what you are telling me about changing the rules of the game not affecting the outcome, the only way to be sure of that is to model the behaviour based on a statistical random model with a large group of artificial players. If on average the rule change causes a difference in the churn, and it really should, then this will prove the point. Specifically, upward mobility. In my opinion, witnesses should not be incumbent, maybe serve for 6 months and then move on to something else.
Let's face it, if you haven't done anything with the big boost in income, then you should be taken off the schedule. I don't think it would hurt someguy123, jesta, or many others who have gone on to produce money making websites. Though some depend on that income to fund the site, even then, their prominence and celebrity leads to ongoing support through big upvotes from bigger accounts.
That cannot happen with a prisoners dilemma motivating this self and circle voting. Even after they move to a substantial new income source, they turn around and use it to continue to consolidate their position.