Simple test for right vs wrong on the steem blockchain... there is more to it than "the code is law".

We have a number of problems that have popped up during the life of this new adventure that the steem blockchain has introduced. Mostly we are able to solve them as a community. There is a common thing that will occur when what some view as an "exploit", bad P.R., etc occurs. Inevitably someone will point out "the code allows it". Some may fall back to the original white paper, and the crab bucket analogy in the white paper is a particularly popular one to reference.

First, Dan Larimer is a man. He is not omniscient and having spoken to him several times he is also humble enough he never would claim to be. He designed the code the best he could at the time. The team has continued to do the same. They are not gods. They are not omniscient. They are not actually super human in any way. They are people like you, and I, though with their own set of skills. They write the code as best they can, but they cannot foresee every eventuality. They write a white paper that describes what they envision as best as they can at the time. They are not forming a religion and some holy text. While the blockchain itself is intended to be immutable the white paper, and the code are not necessarily meant to be immutable.

I do know the hope was that for most problems the community could solve those problems via consensus. I might be becoming more of an idealist all of the time. I optimistically think we can solve most of the problems.

I guess I came up with a litmus test the other day without realizing it. @lukestokes actually pointed it out as a simple solution. It actually is.

When we encounter a problem there is a simple test in the form of a simple question that we can ask that I think will let us know whether the activity is good or bad.

If that activity were to be done by EVERYONE would this project survive?

A recent one was a good example of that. With HF19 we had less votes, but they were worth a lot more. Some people took it upon themselves to up vote their own COMMENTS (not just their posts) with 100% or large amounts of their steem power. It was not a matter of simple visibility. It was very noticeable if they engaged in back and forth dialog with people as they'd tend to up vote their own replies and you'd notice each vote dropping a little in value as they burned through their voting power. It was noted that some of these people don't even up vote the original post, they focus on just themselves.

They of course have the standard "It is my steem power, I should be able to vote how I want", or perhaps "It is not wrong because the code allows it".

My question of "What would happen to steem, steemit, etc if all of us did it?" resolves this conundrum quickly.

This project would fail. The value of steem would decline and there would be those that pulled flesh from its corpse as it died in the form of up voting their own comments.

This is not the only case where that question is useful. I believe it is a simple enough one to help a person decide whether the action is good or bad when it comes to the steem blockchain ecosystem.

I believe we all want this new world we are exploring to not only survive but to flourish. This means our decisions also need to be weighed in terms of their impact upon the survival and growth of this adventure.

I never had a problem with people up voting their own posts. I also didn't have a problem with people spending a few cents to up vote their comments for visibility. That isn't what people were doing that started off this latest conflagration.

"Code is Law" can easily become dogmatic and religion. "White Paper" is the bible also makes it very religious. Neither of these things are immutable. They were simply the foundation upon which things began.