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RE: Locking stake for 100% passive income, improving content, helping apps

in #steem5 years ago

"Christianity was a small sect until the leading class ..."

  1. It was not the only small sect. There were hundreds ... and yet Christianity came on top. While others withered away ... Your conclusion is that "looking at the winning sect is a bad idea, bad example to learn from the winner" ... ???
  2. Being a sect that was non-violent it could not defend itself ... it took about 300 years until Constantine made it the state religion. It could have disappeared thousands of times before that, yet not only it did not, it only spread from about 20-30 people in 32 AD to presumably many tens of thousands, 3 centuries later ... it scaled ... yet it is ... not even a bad example but ... a very bad example ???
  3. So, if I understand you well, if 300 years from now the leading class realizes that Steem could work better (than the current financial system, for instance) to keep the little guys under control then you'd count that as a failure ....

No, this proposal stays painfully inside the box - it is a mere tweak whose ultimate objective is to "make Trending meaningful again". It does not address the biggest hurdle Steem faces, i.e. bringing more people into the system, growing.

What we need is growth. The problem of bid bots and their distortion of trending is a red herring, a distraction.

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You should have a look what the main criticism of outsiders is right now, then you'd see that the bots and vote selling are a lot more than a red herring.

While we of course need users, we also need a use case for SP so these users give it value. Right now you don't need to power up to get eyes on your posts, you have to pay. That goes straight against the value proposition of steem.

Inside the box in at least two ways:

  1. when you mention "outsiders" you clearly have in mind people who have come in contact with steem and have left because of bots and vote selling. From, say, maybe 1 000 000 people who have tried Steem, only about 1/5 remain, the others have left because of bots and vote selling. That is not good, indeed. But if you look outside the box, there are another 2 000 000 000 (2 billion) people who have a Facebook account and haven't even approached Steem; they have no idea about bots and vote selling. These 2 billion people are outside the box. Calculating the (absolute) number of wonderful content creators that would nevertheless choose to stay on Steem despite the bots and the vote selling is left as an exercise to the reader. Calculating the price of STEEM when the number of dynamic, talented content creators on steem reaches 400 000 000 also.
  2. More importantly - right now you don't need to power up to get eyes on your posts, you have to pay. Right. But that is because of the algorithm for Trending ! You seem to treat that as immutable, but is it really ? What prevents Steemit Inc. from completely changing the way it displays posts and introducing something that doesn't look at rewards thus making bots and vote selling irrelevant ? What prevents Steemit from taking the logic of Utopian and Oracle-d and registering communities, each one with responsibility to promote authors in respect to their previously published (and potentially voted) specific "charte of good conduct/content"?

No, I have not been talking about people who left, but about possible investors who had a look and decided the system doesn't work due to what they saw.

Getting more social media users is nice, but utterly useless if they're not willing to invest because the investment doesn't have any use for them.

We could easily attract more people by giving them more free stuff, but in the end that just leads to a price decline. Utopian is a good example. While it may bring in users it wouldn't work out without the delegations that allow to promise them money.

We need reasons for users to put in money, not just new people who draw some out.

It has to do with the nature of money then. Money, what it is, where does it come from, many people think they know it. But they don't.

Money is a truly complex topic that not everybody understands, far from it.

Money is work. Money is credit. Money is distrust.
Probably the best explanation of how money works that I read is "Evil is the root of all money" by Kiyotaki and Moore

STEEM is credit. A promise. Whoever puts money in STEEM implicitly believes a promise. Think about what that promise might be? What is STEEM implicitly promising to investors ? It promises work in exchange. The ultimate backing for money is human work.

We need more work, more good quality work in the system.

That can in theory be achieved inside the box, from the existing users, by improving Trending. I contend that is a shortsighted focus and unlikely to succeed (even if it was only because of the opposition of those who benefit from the current system).

It can also be achieved by thinking outside the box - complementing Trending and bringing more great content creators to steem in the spirit of "turning the other cheek" - content creators who come on Steem not for the rewards but because they want to not be hooked to Medium for instance, or any other reason you can think of.

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