My Steemit Upvote is an Extension of my Personal Philosophy

Just as buying thing is like voting with your dollar,

Upvoting is your contribution to the future of the Steemit environment.

snapped with my Canon SLR - a worker bee CURATES the flowers blooming ;)

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I'm firmly within the crowd that seeks to better Steemit through selectively upvoting and supporting users based on "What the content gives to Steemit" rather than "What the curation reward gives to me."

But why? Curation rewards are great! There's no reason to avoid a higher payout..

I beg to differ.

Of course it's easy to argue for the immediate profit of a decision, especially when it's within a rare context such as Steemit, where an upvote is nothing more than a leaf in the wind. (From me, atleast)

But what is this actually doing to the platform, long-term, and large-scale?

Logically, this will centralize Steemit further. As curation rewards decrease, people will be pushed to upvote ONLY reliable content which has a proven history of paying out well.
This is disastrous for the future of Steemit, as it means, sadly, no one will be able to move ahead in the game.

This divide has already begun.

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Let's use an example. What would YOU do here?

Vote for the obvious curation reward? The reputation is high.. You could get as much as 1SP back!

Or.. Could you support the Amateur Mycologist, which happens to be a favorite subject of mine..

Let's get hypothetical..

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You've been supporting the amateur mycologist for months now, and their posts are reaching more and more people. Eventually, botanists online take notice, and start to produce their own articles. A culture of nature experts at the fingertips of every Steemit user has formed.
One day, a young woman takes note of just how COOL all these plants and mushroom are, the orchids and the lichen. "I want to study Botany!" She says, to her dried out cactus on the windowsill.

She eventually goes on to cure every known disease with a plant she synthesized from Hemp and.. Kale..

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Okay okay.. That's a bit of a stretch, but you get the point!

The implications of your upvote stretch far beyond the immediate small reward you can conjure up.

Steemit is not a place to mindlessly click things based on a reward. It is actually an extremely useful platform for innovation, collaboration, and improving social and self awareness.

Steem on, friends!