RE: Stake-weighted voting is a neo-fascist abomination: anti-liberty, anti-equality, anti-humanity
To be honest, I think your conceptualization of the 'critically flawed concept at the root of it' is so profound that you really shouldn't be involved with Steem at all if you feel so strongly that way. Steem was designed as a stake-weighted system for good reasons.
Yes, you can try to promote some SMT token that is not stake weighted, but you could also do that with another platform altogether; the result would bear little to no resemblance to Steem (for better or worse). Perhaps this would work, but frankly I have my doubts for the simple reason that I do not believe you will get significant investor interest to pour in money where other people (not the investors) get to vote to give away the investors' money. And without investor interest there will be no (or negligible) money to distribute. If I am wrong, then great, someone will have built something useful. But it won't be Steem (whether or not that token happens to be hosted on Steem as an SMT).
Those of us who are doing our best to make Steem work better do not agree that there is only one way to do so. You may describe it as lipstick on a pig but we don't agree that Steem is (or needs to be) a pig. And if you really do feel that way then I would question why you should feel so strongly opposed to these efforts to improve it. After all, there is no real harm in putting lipstick on a pig; the metaphor refers to a decoration that makes no real difference either way. You seem to be claiming something else entirely.
Firstly, I appreciate your response - fair enough. To be clear, I refer to not Steem itself, but rather, the allocation of rewards. Nevertheless, point taken about not being involved with Steem, but at this time, I have invested too much - financially, time and effort - into Steem to leave quietly.
Semantics aside, the pig may be allergic to overindulgence of lipstick. Given, the last dozen applications have failed. Or, the opportunity cost of utilizing resources to doing something different.
I agree about investor interest and SMTs. However, I also think the same about Steem; and that monetizing content from inflation is ultimately unsustainable. Or most crypto tokens, really, which monetize various things through inflation. As well we know, most crypto tokens' value is derived from speculation rather than any real utility. That said, I'm totally fine with refocusing Steem as an open information market rather than a social network.
I don't really know what that means but if you have a proposal to make I would suggest making it.
Okay then, I would reiterate that your objections to the recent proposals to try to improve the economic model are overblown. If the fundamental concept is unsustainable then the proposals make little difference and you are greatly exaggerating their importance. (I'd also note that, if so, then SMTs also have little value since out-of-the-box support for various versions of this model is their primary claimed advantage over other simpler or more powerful token systems.)
If you are wrong that stakeholder allocated inflation is fundamentally unsustainable, then the sincere and reasoned efforts to improve the economic incentives may indeed bear fruit. If not then it simply doesn't matter (and as I noted elsewhere, there really is no tradeoff with SMTs here). To be clear I'm not convinced you are wrong, just not 100% sure you are right. I consider the relatively modest and relatively inexpensive effort necessary to attempt improvements to be worth trying.
One thing I would note is that allocating of inflation-sourced rewards by stakeholder consensus is not necessarily "monetizing content". There are many other possible uses for such rewards including incentivizing developers or marketing. It doesn't have to be content. Indeed I would argue that monetizing content specifically is highly overrated and economically questionable at best.
I don't have a proposal, as I don't understand or care for a free information market. It's basically what Steem has been tending towards anyway. Think along the lines of embracing the bidbot concept, embracing self voting, making it part of the protocol where people buy and sell information / attention through staking of whatever kind, with no governance involved. Forget about any pretense that this is a social network which rewards engaging content and discussions even somewhat appropriately. This is a separate discussion, though, and I'm not the right person for it.
But, yes, this is what I meant as well.
And to be clear, SMTs are very flawed, and I don't expect much. I made it very clear in my post that I'm "highly skeptical". However, I do hold some hope that the competition will lead to someone creating a protocol for their own SMT which might just be sustainable. I'll remain skeptical till that happens.
I would argue that the situation is actually worse as Steem is not tending toward a 'free information market' (whatever that is) but just toward a truly failed economy. Self voting and vote selling is not a direction that leads anywhere useful I'm afraid. We aren't quite there yet but the path is very unattractive.
I share your view that maybe someone will figure out something useful to do with SMTs but I'm also not supportive of betting it all on that possibility while sitting by and watching the rest of the system collapse of its own weight in the mean time. The proposed economic changes aren't guaranteed to work but I'm willing to give them a chance.
Oh yes, of course, I agree, and want no part of a self voting, bidbot network. Unfortunately, that's a fundamental feature of stake-weighted voting, and will remain so after the proposed Hardfork changes. Of course, that is where we disagree, so we'll just have to move on.