The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation
What if Steemians had an Ethnocentric Culture? (Let's Brainstorm)
We Are All Steemians Here
Let's imagine 2 teams play soccer(football for the Europeans). Team 1 are humanistic, they pass the ball to anyone on the field. Team 2 are ethnocentric, they pass the ball only to their own team.
Which one would win in your opinion?
It doesn't take a freak IQ to realize that team 2 will win...every time. But why is this important?
Recent agent-based computer simulations suggest that ethnocentrism, often thought to rely on complex social cognition and learning, may have arisen through biological evolution. From a random start, ethnocentric strategies dominate other possible strategies (selfish, traitorous, and humanitarian) based on cooperation or non-cooperation with in-group and out-group agents. Here we show that ethnocentrism eventually overcomes its closest competitor, humanitarianism, by exploiting humanitarian cooperation across group boundaries as world population saturates.
-The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation
I am always fascinated by the jewish people. Nobody does tribalism like they do. They have been without homeland for hundreds of years but they have found a way to thrive in foreign land simply by purchasing and going business as much as possible with each other.
How does that playout on July 4th?
If you play the humanitarian paradigm, you would say that we are "all in it together" in the cryptocurrency sphere. So of course, trading your Steem Dollars to Bitcoin in order to buy stuff on overstock.com is normal. It's the easiest path, the clearing house for crypto. Not cooperating with the other alt-coins could be taken as a form of discrimination or "racism". People in that category will often say: "I am a blockchain agnostic".
If you play the traitor paradigm, you would cash everything you can on July 4th. Sucking as much value out for yourself.
If you play the selfish paradigm, you would do what's best for yourself at any given point depending on market situation.
If you play the ethnocentric paradigm, we would only purchase directly from other steemians. Products and services would trade in our own currency among the tribe.
Bitcoin was ethnocentric by default
When there was only bitcoin, it was easy to be tribal because it was the only one you could trade. This culture remain today de facto because of it's dominance in the market. Remember how some people were pissed at alt-coins for "diluting" the power of bitcoin? That's tribalism.
How Can That Apply to Steemit?
After July 4th, people all over the world will start earning Steem Dollars. Some may make the big bucks and others will make a few dollars each day. Going through an exchange is a major hurdle for the average person. This can work in our advantage since most people who will come into steemit won't be cryptoccurency people. If the average guy had 10 Steem Dollars, he wouldn't spend his time trying to get it into his bank account. But if I had an easy to spend it, then that would generate an internal economy and create utility for the currency.
But How?
I'm here to brainstorm ideas. Please add your ideas in the comment box below.
That's where my list is at:
- Create a Craigslist of people who only trade in Steem Dollars (SteemList?)
- Develop a Gaming App Store within Steemit.com (like Facebook) where gaming token are purchase in SD.
- Develop Dice Games, Bingo Games, Poker Games, etc. (not sure it can be hosted on steemit.com though)
- Creating Financial Products like Insurance or Life Insurance that works in Steem Dollars
- (Your Idea Here)
So, after a month of "playing the game", what's your perspective on this??? I would hope the great work and postings would end up being upvoted for and get rewarded with proper equity that way and now wonder, as time goes by and as the site is becoming a monumental gathering whether or not the highly valuable posts will eventually get that reward of their worth? Namaste :)
Here's one idea
https://steemit.com/garage-sale/@william-noe/lets-start-a-consignment-market-using-crypto
I like the idea. Not sure a post on Steemit is the way to do this since, I have no way to bookmark it directly in steemit. But if we did, that could work.
Ok how about this. Any number of community members (preferably whales) could sponsor a bonus for anyone who has earned less than a certain threshold amount in SD (let's say 30 SD) by July the 4th. The deal would be that any account that was interested would reply to a primary post. Then over the next month, if they were able to contribute enough quality content and they were able to earn over a certain threshold amount (that factored in their SP,) those sponsoring the challenge would double the payout.
So the idea would be to provide a community incentive to reward keeping going, especially for those who have less steem and would like more. They don't lose anything if they fail to reach the threshold but they don't get the bonus.
I think larger holders are less likely to cash out now and that it's more important to incentivize those with less SP who find it that much harder to accumulate. There are a lot of people who are posting great content but are not getting as much as they might in the future, so anything we can do to encourage and retain these great people who benefits all of Steemit, it's worth doing.
It might be difficult to implement or unworkable for some other reason......
It's an interesting idea. I think having a lot of small holders of SD is good as long as they have a way to spend it somewhere. The more money they have, the higher is the incentives to go through the hurdle of figuring out the exchange and transferring to a bank account (Having $10K of virtual money would definitely burn a whole in my pocket). You can't do much with $5 SD...but if there were games they could spend it on or something else then there would be a reason for people to stick around and play the game.
Absolutely love the idea of building genuine trade and an economy around SD and Steem......its essential if people are going to see either as a store of productivity. Also, I think you are right about not bothering to cash out $5 of SD but I don't think that is a valid argument because Steemit is worth sticking with for all amounts. I'm guess i'm thinking of supercharging the efforts of a tier of early adopters who's ranks may be filled with low SP accounts but brilliant curators. I think content rewards maybe take care of themselves as they are well rewarded.
Interesting ... but what if the game is not soccer. What if the ball rewards who receives it, but increases it's value-giving by the diversity of those who touch it?