RE: Understanding Steem's Economic Flaw, Its Effects on the Network, and How to Fix It.
Weakening individual voters from unilaterally directing rewards does not weaken the ability of individuals to earn, in fact it probably strengthens it. The reward pool is short term zero sum. It always goes to someone.
We don't need to get into Marxist ideology to see that people voting for themselves (either directly or via obfuscation schemes which accomplish the same thing) does not accomplish anything productive for either the individual or the community. It is a dog chasing its tail. It is like going into business and then going out the back door of the store, walking around to the front and walking in as a customer. Pointless.
The way to earn in a non-Marxist sense is to offer something of value and then have actual customers (i.e. other than yourself) want to buy it. Translating that back to Steem, post something of value and then have other people vote for it. Since we can not prevent self voting (people can always do it through other accounts or obfuscation schemes), the only way for the system to reward actual value is to have other people to identify non-value and object to it earning rewards. There is no other way.
Everyone here keeps going around and around without facing the real problem.
By definition, most people can not create above average content.
The changes that are being tossed around in the OP will take away the majority's ability to earn Steem.
Which takes away the majority's incentive to hold Steem. Because to hold Steem means an 8% per year loss to inflation.
And without an incentive for the masses to buy and hold Steem, it becomes worthless
Value is not necessarily the same as content. If I see a real community of users joining Steem, posting pictures of their dinner, and getting upvoted by their friends, all while helping to recruit other friends to join Steem, I'm not going to object to that at all. The content may be worthless in a broader sense but their presence is not, and it is perfectly fine to reward it.
To be fair I am not a fan of the superlinear concept, at least not beyond some very minimal level, because I do agree that it shuts out the non-stars if taken too far.
The 8%/year thing is kind of nonsense. Any successful cryptocurrency will grow in value by a lot more than 8%/year. Typical growth rates are 30% to hundreds of percent, even averaged over several years. Even passive (non-voting) investors who are 'losing' 8% per year would benefit enormously if Steem really took off, and getting the rewarding mechanism to work better is something that can help it do just that.
The reason to hold STEEM is not to milk out a few percent of more (potentially worthless) STEEM in rewards by exploiting the voting system, it is because you think that STEEM is going to be worth a LOT more in the future.
What you are advocating will stop Steem's growth in its tracks.
How many accounts are here? How many will produce "quality content".
What will the rest of the accounts do once smooth and friends start downvoting their work? Have you not engaged with the community? The biggest issue for most users is that nobody upvotes their work. Now you want to have others to downvote it? You realize that the downvoting will be arbitrary right? Most likely accross political lines. People stop creating content here now, because it isn't rewarded. Just wait until it starts getting downvoted and see how long people last.
All that will happen is that those who write articles or comments that most resembles mainstream thought will be rewarded most - that is human nature. People upvote things they agree with - and with a cheap downvote, they will downvote what they disagree with.
You can see that dynamic at play already in this very comment thread. Say something popular, and receive upvotes. Say something unpopular under your scheme, and you will be downvoted.
Welcome to the Steem echo-chamber.
Not to mention that those who want to continue to upvote themselves will simply open multiple accounts to obfuscate their actions.
Also, even if you are successful, then what is Steem? A place for professional authors and photographers to reward each other? That's a pretty small community.
It certainly stops being social media if every post is critiqued - and then has no possibility of reward if it doesnt meet with smooth's definition of quality content.
If I take a picture of my dinner and my friends here like it - the way people use Facebook - is that quality content? Will I be critiqued and downvoted by a professional photographer who is envious because I have more friends (and thus more reward). Do you not understand that this is how downvotes will be used?
Why fucking bother post on Steemit at all if there is no incentive to be here? That's already the biggest reason people leave - they were told they could post here and be rewarded for it. And they don't get any votes. Now you want to make it even harder for a minnow to profit? Not only can he no longer invest in himself, but now he has to please all the critics? Why wouldn't someone just go to back to Twitter or Facebook if they arent going to be rewarded anyway?
One downvote large enough to erase someones entire earnings for a post that she worked hard on - that is all it will take for someone to leave here and never return. And it will happen in droves.
There is barely any growth (in fact over the past few months probably shrinkage). New users sign up but churn is massive. People don't stick around. Web traffic is declining, too. https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/steemit.com
That's exactly right, because the voting is being used by people who self-enrich. The (broken) economic incentives push the system in that direction. New users who show up won't be the targets of downvotes to any great extent; they're barely visible and no one has any reason to downvote them if they are being sincere in their participation. The targets will be all the worthless cookiecutter paid-vote crap that you see on trending day after day which does nothing to attract traffic and sucks the reward pool away from the newcomers.
You are contrdicting yourself here. Taking a picture of your dinner and sharing it is not 'working hard'. If you post your dinner and people enjoy seeing it and reward you a little, that's great, but if you aren't rewarded, it is the same as Facebook and hardly the end of the world. People who do work hard to make a big contribution will occasionally be downvoted too. That will sometimes happen and is unfortunate, but they will also benefit day after day when their ability to get rewards is not destroyed by parasites using self voting, paid votes, etc. Better protecting of the reward pool from the rampant and growing self-enrichment that exists will benefit those making a real value-added contribution far more than it ever hurts them.
If I had a STEEM for everyone who got downvoted and said they were leaving and will never return I'd have a lot more STEEM than I have now! It is absurd, and even more than that, self-limiting. If people do leave (which they don't) then there are more rewards left to retain the rest of the users and attract new ones.
There is no perfect system but we can make it less grossly dysfunctional than it is now.