How The Ancient Vote Selling Worked
I found an interesting article I’d like to share with Steemians with a reason. Vote selling was a well known practice already in the ancient Rome:
Since most voters saw elections as irrelevant to their own lives, many candidates resorted to bribery to convince the people to cast their votes. Bribery became such a commonplace practice in the later Republic that it was seen as a normal part of the political process, and ranged anywhere from the blatant promising of money to simply hosting games and entertaining the people.
Vote selling and war
Sometime during the mid-second century, Polybius noted the prohibition of bribery, but this proved to be useless as it continued to be prominent in elections and was very difficult to differentiate between bribery and the patronage system. … the consequences of such corruption caused a lack of faith in the constitution and the political process, which led, in part, to civil war.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Vote selling causes crisis
I think if there was some sort of voting in prehistoric times, like in the stone age, vote selling also existed. Seems to be part of human nature.
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(Photo: Roman Forum, Wikimedia Commons)
Seemingly, the vote selling had an important part in the fall of the Roman republic and the rise of the new tyrants, the emperors (caesars). And I think, the same vote selling – with other practices like self-upvoting, bots and circle yer… I mean, circle upvoting – has an important part in the crisis of Steemit, too.
Principle and reality
Why? Because the wonderful ground principle of “rewarding the valuable content”, “proof of brain”, “we pay you for your content” etc. gets hurt in a great extent. The reward pool isn’t rewarding the good content, it’s rewarding mostly investments (wealth), money, vote selling-and-buying activity.
Many people are wasting more time with this activities than with post writing. Some sort of mixture of proof of brain and proof of stake is the reality now.
OK, but there’s nothing new in this – can you add with a reason. This reality was described already by many authors with other words. I have an idea, which I’d like to discuss in one of my next posts.
Vote selling was invented 1 hour after invention of voting.
Well, this is all about a variety of strategies when money is involved. The money itself does not satisfy itself. Money is number that has no end. This is where we're contaminated with. Its like our happiness or our seek for happiness that never ends. We're not satisfied with one kind of happiness and look for other kinds much more exciting or those we haven't experienced yet. We're creatures that never satisfy.
With so much of our obsession of satisfaction, we end up overwhelmed and tend to be unfocused on things we should do and serve as our purpose of existence.
Hi @deathcross, interesting article, I am totally against bidbots and believe they should be eliminated. Not only are people buying up-votes, but also reputation. I also note that people are totally hypocritical about this, today there is a witness trending who only said Happy new year and everybody id giving positive comments, the other day there was a guy trending who posted a photo of his son, saying merry Christmas and he got down votes, with people complaining the post was not worth to be trending - same thing different reaction. I believe bidbots and vote selling should be eradicated, as it is against what Steemit is supposedly standing for - good content being rewarded!!
Thank you very much for this contribution.
It's so common but does that legitimize it?
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Very interesting.
I find it baffling that investment is always thrown in as a reason for anything.
As an investor you are responsible for your decision. It is not the job of the platform to make it work out for you.
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Of course investors have also responsibilities, but it matters very much if something is legal or not. Buying tobacco shares, for example, maybe not ethical, but is legal, and there will be always people doing it. If it were forbidden, much less people would do it.
It doesn't need to be forbidden. Profitability of vote selling should be reduced because it hurts the platform in the long run
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This vote selling have cost content creator like me badly. I am glad I did not move entirely out of YouTube.
At YouTube at least they promote my video if it is related to the user favourite type of video. Here at steemit I have no chance to be notice since nobody will promote my content. I can understand cause not everyone enjoy my cup of tea but it feel like an insult to people like me to see a picture get a hundred dollars worth of upvote when mine take time and money to do.
My YouTube subscriber increase faster than In steemit as well.
I lked your comment very much. I like numismatics. Or simply makeing a photo of a nice banknote. Most are really masterpieces.
This thought about the insult.... is important, I will quote you some day.
Just to be clear. I mean a post will just picture. Only a few word. One example is a picture of plant or animal. It does not make sense how it can reach 100+ plus.
I can understand if it is a masterpiece but if it is not so masterpiece than it does not make sense to worth so much.
"Vote selling and the fall of the Steemian empire", hopefully not someone's thesis next year...
It's easy for us to nearly dismiss the fact that our ancestors were just as functional in daily life as we are today. I'd argue that the same style of political discourse and intrigue is going on even today.
Thanks for sharing this outline.
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