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RE: Steem and Writing – Another Lane on the Highway to Hell?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Steemit. There are certainly no guarantees that it will succeed. I do believe the micro payment structure will dominate writer compensation in the future. With Steemit the reader doesn't directly lose money by upvoting material. Also I'm not sure how much the point that Steemit will probably remain dominated by young readers will undoubtedly affect the compensation of the professional writer. That is, that experience will probably give the writer a small edge over gen pop, but may be insignificant. Also wondering how people like Oprah will affect the ecosystem. (Also I've realized people rarely look at posts that don't have a picture inserted)
I suppose I wonder what "success" looks like here? If the Oprahs join in, then surely the technology guarantees their dominance - and the way this is set up it seems to me tailor made for exploitation by the big fish, in that everyone's contribution delivers value to the network, and thus the surplus value is creamed off by the few. In other words, everyone works to serve the interests of the dominant players. Isn't this an even more extreme version of capitalist exploitation? Funny to see so many so-called anarchists here...
Maybe. One thing that I'm hoping will keep the balance is the use of micro payments. Upvotes here aren't exactly micropayments..but a similar idea. It's never been economical to give someone a penny over the internet. That has given the rich and powerful an advantage as they can move money around while a bunch of small players can't make a dent. Now that every upvote carries at least some benefit things may eventually balance out. Right now the skew is large. If the market cap went up 100 fold, the whales would no longer make up such a huge percentage of the total. I could be wrong about that..but I think with an increasing market cap and an increasing user base a little bit more balance will occur.
According to my reading of the Steem White Paper, one of the issues this is designed to address is what the WP says bluntly on page 25: 'Micropayments Dont' work.' While I think you're right that increasing market cap will diminish the obvious inequity of the Whales vs Everyone Else situation right now, what it won't do is address the overall power imbalance that I increasingly feel the blockchain favours. As market cap grows, the value of small holdings will dwindle towards nothing, while large holdings will grow in absolute terms even as they shrink in percentage terms. The real issue for me is this appropriation of surplus value by big players - be they founders, early adopters or simple investors who have bought their positions directly (in a straight cash-for-influence/power swap that could hardly be more nakedly 'capitalist'). It's very clever and it's probably going to make a few people rich.