RE: Consensus exists only in equalitarian groups, where everybody has the same rights to express their will by influence and be influenced by all the others
"A just and fair system means that equal rights exist. When people don't have equal rights, there is an unjust system."
Well, one could argue that everyone has the equal right to buy shares of steem in order to direct their invested vote wherever they want. The just, in this case, is that the shareholder gets a larger say than the non-shareholder - because the shareholder is invested.
Without the share-buying mechanism, then there is also no reward mechanism, because there is no value in the steem token.
Plus, in the context of the internet, and the argument that "When people don't have equal rights" .... we have to factor in that "people" can be bots. 1000 votes could be a single bot voting with 1000 facades. Invested vote solves this problem.
I'm a noob so I could be wrong, correct me.
Trending page (most $$$): done by whales = plutocracy
Hot page (most popular/upvoted): done by bots = botnet
I think these two games are not fun for the 99%. I can live without the money game, after all I don't put my money in Steem, so I'm kinda ok I cannot move a single cent of the reward pool.
But I like to play the popularity game, and I like it with real humans, not with bots. You can actually play this game on Facebook and Reddit, I would like to have it on Steemit also...
Yes, but having more money to invest doesn't make you (generic you) better at voting or curating, or better at doing the best for the community.
Steem isn't decentralized in voting power, someone likes it, but if I need to invest thousands of dollars to move 1 cent, you're making this reward-game fun just for rich people. Or early miners. Not for the 99%.
On the other hand, if Steem price goes to 0, I could buy 1 million Steem and become a whale in a desert.
I still don't get why Steem allows bots. I don't know if it's technically doable, but I would like no bots at all on Steemit. Maybe some bot is useful for automated comments, but not for voting or posting. We can't talk about quality, popularity or community, when this post (example) has 50 views and 270 votes. Bots maybe be good money for tech guys, not for the masses.
Right now it's not technically doable.
But you are forced to think in terms of what is best to do. There is financial pain in one's mistakes which creates a feedback mechanism to improve what you do.
CAPTCHAs can be used to prevent bots but they are extremely annoying for humans.
When I registered on Steemit I was asked for my telephone number, for sms verification (just one time, not annoying).
So I suppose there are other ways to create accounts, without verification. I think that should be fixed.
However, I would prefer to suffer some captcha than having lot of bots messing up the site like now.
This is true but I don't think this mechanism is working: Steem is cutting-edge blockchain technology, but price goes down and down (I could be wrong, I'm not trader nor crypto expert).
The big stakeholder of a magazine doesn't directly choose what is going in first page and what is not, it's not his job, even if he could do it with a phone call. That job is done by people paid to guess what is best to sell: its stakeholder interest, but stakeholder is not able to do it. In our case, this job could be done by people in a democratic way, not by whales (stakeholders) or bots (?!#!?).
I will try to write down some problems of this mechanism but it's really just guessing:
Top earnings posts are often nerd/crypto stuff, upvoted by nerd/crypto whales; this is a vicious circle because people who wanna earn money will post stuff based on whales tastes (actually doable because there are few whales), and interests as a Steem stakeholders.
In a popular network (with big human user base) a post about Bitcoin price or fee would never make this much views/likes/money.
Earning several thousand of dollars with a make-up tutorial (zero originality) in a Steem t-shirt is another example, it makes me think unfair.
From outside this money-game looks like a small circle.
Good point, I understand that. If there was a global delegation of power, then active real users who post and comment would get access to the community delegated power once they prove themselves. The SP would have returns of curation by the community engaging in activity to influence who gets rewarded. The accounts that aren't interacting in the community through posts and comments, would not have that power. People could give SP to accounts as sock puppet or bots, but no power to affect system since they aren't active in the community. That's the idea I have, but not sure it works. Thanks for the feedback. Please add more ;)
Everyone has equal rights to buy steem,but not equal opportunity,as some are rich,and some are poor,I don't know if this has escaped your attention?
The bot argument is a valid one,however,but there must be ways around that.The Viva platform is designed to be much more fair than Steemit.I'm not sure what solution they have come up with to prevent bot voting,you can ask @williambanks .The fact that Viva will be more egalitarian is crucial,and it's one of many reasons why it's a more promising platform than Steemit,at least for the average person,and also for investors.But the whales on steemit might be motivated to stay,it's easy money after all.
Remember that steem shares are distributed as posting rewards also and you are not required to have a single cent. There are users with more than 100 million vests gained through posting alone.
True,but this does not change my argument.Remember that people who are finacially secure also has more time to write articles,and also in general have a higher education,class definitely plays a role here.Having some whale friends and connections works wonders as well.
Well, if one doesn't have either money or time to engage in the platform, then perhaps they don't "deserve" a bigger say in how content is being rewarded.
The financial inequality argument is always problematic because it ends up with people wanting free money to compensate.
But even if free money was given out, and say, everyone had equal shares of steem handed out, what would the poor people do? They'd have to trade their steem power for $$$ because real life necessities are more important for their life than steem power that can affect the reward pool in the steem platform. So people with lack of money would sell their vests while people with excess money would buy them. And then the poor people would still say that the power distribution is unfair (even if they got the exact same slice as everyone else) because the others had more money and were able to not only keep their vests but also buy the vests of others, while they "lost" theirs for cheap.
So? They'd say they need more vests to get voting power and then, even if it was gifted to them, they'd sell it due to RL needs being more important. Again. And then complain. Again.
Steem can't hope to fix the global inequalities in wealth or education, but it can provide opportunities for people to make money by participating in the platform.
Thanks for taking the time to comment,but I did not mean that we should hand out free money.And your imagination about the poor people seem to betray a certain disdain.Research on basic income has shown that poor people are quite capable of handling money.I'm a poor person myself,and I would never dream of powering down,I'm not stupid.The risk/rewards asessment clearly speaks against that.You seem to think that poor people just lack competence or intelligence,or they would have succeeded.This is a very popular view in certain political circles,but it does not hold up to scrutiny.In order to succed in this system,start-up capital is essential.Right now I'm trying to crawl my way up from the bottom,and I can promise you it's very slow.And posting on steemit is not a good deal for me at the moment,as I'm suffering from a burnout.Which was caused by unfortunate circumstances which I will not go into,but suffice it to say that these circumstances are most definitely class related,and if I had more money,it would not have occured.