RE: A simple, radical change to Steem that could fix most of our problems.
Kind of. But my conclusion of my musing (without having pulled any data yet) was that being paid inflation allocated to SP holders is the dividend and is enough. Inactive users do not deserve more than that even though the game allows it.
The objection to self voting really is about the desire for less inactive participants, or about less activity that is "like inactive behavior". You say self voting is null behavior, which I understand from the amount corresponding to their stake. But I still feel that this isn't true if viewed from valuation in USD, after the market reacts to the current voting behavior.
Let me ask another question which I think might be interesting. How will we be able to evaluate the intrinsic value of our ideal interaction / the core game with active participants in the proposed system? The steem price lumps both together, and I posit that the inactive participants affect the valuation.
The interest that comes from the changing vests:SP conversion? I don't see why anyone would stake here if that was all they were getting. It's much less than the base inflation rate.
Basically the same clumsy way we do now: by counting activity and search engine ranks and so on. If I can come up with a truly good way to value social media networks I'll sell it to Google for a billion dollars and it won't matter if Steem is sustainable cause I can keep it as a retirement toy.
The Steem price doesn't do this and I doubt it ever will.
Well I suppose if that first option would be taken up it would serve as a more direct proxy for value. But yeah, fat chance of that.
It did give me another idea, though. Not, probably, for Steem, because getting from here to there doesn't seem practical. But if one were building another chain like this, it might make sense to tie the inflation rate to activity growth somehow, rather than just setting it at a convenient integer. Then everyone would have motivation to contribute.