RE: Understanding Steem's Economic Flaw, Its Effects on the Network, and How to Fix It.
The most common problem that leads to failure of an economy is wealth inequality. When wealth inequality becomes too high the people at the top create rules/policies to make sure their wealth is protected so they can continue earning wealth, while the people at the bottom begin to give up because they see the economy can no longer provide what they need to survive because most of the already created and new currency is going to people at the top. This applies to all economic models, does not matter if those economies are created by governments or blockchains.
So if you want to make the STEEM blockchain more successful the solution is simple, you have to create rules that provide a more even distribution of the STEEM that is created. I would make the following two changes
1
Only allow 1 upvote per account from another account in a 24 hour period. Meaning you can only upvote yourself once in 24 hours and any other account only once every 24 hours. (this would not eliminate but improve the unequal distribution of newly created STEEM and you can post as much as you want, it would only be a voting restriction)
2
Make downvotes anonymous and also put the same 24 hour restriction per account on downvotes. I think most people do not downvote because they fear retaliation from bigger accounts.
The two above steps would be enough to attract users because it would force people to spread their votes out among many accounts. You can add another step if you want to make an extreme change by eliminating voting bots.
3
Create a captcha feature on the blockchain to verify every vote cast is being cast by a human, this would basically eliminate all automated voting and force people to participate.
There are of course reasons for and against this but basically a social network website is just that, a place for humans to socially interact. When a human buys $1000 USD worth of STEEM and rents that STEEM via a voting bot to earn interest and does not socially interact on that website that does nothing to improve the website. All they did is buy STEEM from an existing user and are now selling their vote, their purchase at the time may have increased the value of STEEM but they are not contributing to the long term success of the platform.
The real value of the STEEM blockchain are the human users who participate and interact on it every day. STEEM is worthless, it only has value when humans assign value to it, the more humans participate the more humans will value it.
I mainly upvoted the comment for the first idea of yours. It's interesting.
As for the 2nd, anonymous downvoting seems not possible with the blockchain.
As for the 3rd, captcha feature won't help at all or maybe help very little. There are a lot of anti-captcha services and it's quite easy for bot creators to implement an anti-captcha service into their bots.
Bots simply bypass the web UI altogether and interact with the blockchain via the API. They won't see a captcha nor need to circumvent it, thought they could if they needed to as you say.
You're right. It's a frontend solution and can't help in terms of blockchain.
Your ideas would kill any incentive to buy and hold Steem.
Holders of Steem would be losing 8% per year to inflation, with no benefit.
So what you are advocating is for those who can afford to buy and hold be forced to subsidize those at the bottom through the inflationary tax imposed by the system.
If holders can not at least keep up with inflation, there is no reason to buy Steem.
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Humans invented currency to be used as an exchange medium for goods and services. An economy is only successful if the majority of humans who participate in that economy are earning and spending currency. An economy begins to fail when the majority of humans who participate are no longer earning enough which means they are not spending enough, this is usually due to, too much money being earned by the minority and being held by the minority.
The STEEM blockchain is an economy, not exactly like an economy created by a country's government, but these same principals still apply. Currently the main thing that gives STEEM value is the social media website(s) that function on top of the STEEM blockchain. So if you want to ensure long term success of the STEEM blockchain you have to create an economy that will benefit the majority which will mostly be new users creating accounts on the STEEM blockchain.
In the future if tens of millions of more users sign up onto the STEEM blockchain and they start using STEEM as a currency to exchange for real world goods and services that will also increase the value of STEEM. That is happening a little bit now but most of the value humans see in STEEM is from the social media aspect it was designed for.
When a user buys STEEM, it may increase the price of STEEM vs another currency at that moment in time, but that does nothing for the long term growth of the STEEM blockchain. All that happens is STEEM is moved from an existing user X account to a new user Y account. If user Y does not participate on the social media aspect of the STEEM blockchain but only uses their new bought STEEM to earn more STEEM by selling their votes, they are not contributing value, they are extracting value. Not only that, they are only able to extract that value because other users who actually participate buy their votes.
The reason I proposed the 3 steps I did is because that is an economic model that would benefit users who participate on the social media aspect and forces all users to spread out their voting power to many users. If you want the STEEM blockchain to compete with sites like facebook/twitter/instagram you have to attract more users to sign up. New users will not sign up nor participate when the see the majority of new created STEEM is going to those users who already have the majority of STEEM that has been created in the past.
Talking to this thread is like talking to Karl Marx's ghost. Everyone thinks they can create an economy based on their own personal beliefs instead of an understanding of human behavior and economics.
anonymous and cheap downvotes will kill all aspects of the social side of this platform, and will do absolutely nothimg to stop (or even influence) selfish behavior. It might stop some self-voting. But it will also incentivise downvoting every other post or comment instead. Downvoting everyone else creates an advantage. And that is far worse than we have now. It simply changes things from a positive (upvote yourself) to a negative (downvote everyone else.).
anonymous and cheap downvotes will turn into political battles. No different than now, we have a tendency to upvote those we agree with, regardless of content quality. That would extend to downvoting everyone we disagree with. We see that now already even though downvoting is expensive. This would eventually kill any dissenting view other than mainstream.
increasing users to give value to the coin. Sure. Increasing the user base will temporarily increase the proce of steem. But, your proposals (only quality content will be upvoted) will ensure that 90% of new users will not be able to earn. 90% of users will never be able to create professional quality content. So there is no reason for them to be here. They create an account, get frustrated, and leave. There is no reason for them to ever invest money in the system. Your explanation also compmetely ignores the need for buyers. If I AM able to make Steem here by creating content, I need a buyer so that I can use those earnings in the real economy. Without buyers who expect some kind of benefit from holding Steem, price will drop to zero no matter how many new users are onboarded..
At that point, it is a completely closed economy of people exchanging worthless tokens..
I am not basing my ideas on personal beliefs, I am basing them on math, human behavior and economics.
The current human behavior we are seeing on the STEEM blockchain is occurring because of the current rules that the STEEM blockchain operates on. If you want to change this human behavior you have to change the rules of the STEEM blockchain, it is that simple.
The only reason anything on earth has value is because humans assign it value based on wants and needs. Look at Facebook for example, it has a current valuation of about $400 Billion, if tomorrow every single user on Facebook decided to delete their account Facebook's value would drop to $0. A social media network has no value without users, if you want to increase value you have to increase users and reward them to keep them coming back.
Exactly my point.
And yet, this thread is about trying to change everyone's behavior based on the wants of a few witnesses instead of the needs of an entire community.
At least one of the proposals will kill Steem - because of economic and behavioral ignornace.
Downvoting is already one of the most divisive and damaging aspects of Steem - strengthening it will kill the coin.
You will introduce downvoting for profit. You will introduce even bigger flag-wars. You will destroy any possibility of a social site. Instead of people upvoting opinions they agree with, they will downvote opinions they disagree with. If will be a complete shit show... And it will do nothing to encourage quality content.
You need to remember - 90% of users are not capable of producing quality content in the first place. And if you arent going to let them share in rewards - then there is no reason for them to be here...
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Furthermore, even if you have some effect on slowing down self-voting, all you will do is transfer votes to the most popular users - not to those who produce the best content.
And who will be the most popular users? One of the criteria will be those with the most SP.
Why?
Because people are more likely to interact with a user who is capable of returning a large upvote...
We already see that now. Those with more SP, bought, earned or otherwise, are sought out to interact with.
...and a site that only rewards the most popular or mainstream opinions is a site that successfully self-censors...
(Nevermind the chilling effect of downvoting)
very interesting ideas, I think they are really going in the right direction !