The Louvre and Maximizing the Value of Steem

The Louvre is the world’s largest museum and probably the most valuable storehouse of historical and artistic treasures on earth.

This amazing place has infinite value for two simple reasons:

1. Content. The Louvre contains more than 380,000 objects. It includes a vast collection paintings, drawings, sculpture, antiquities, and jewelry from all over the world dated from prehistory through the 21st century. The Louvre holds many of the world’s most famous treasures such the Mona Lisa, the Venus De Milo, and the Code of Hammurabi fashioned by the world’s most creative minds. You can view works by Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and a constellation of other artists, known and unknown.

2. Curation. Of the 380,000 objects, only about 35,000 are on display. That means that around 350,000 are in storage. The Louvre contains 652,000 square feet of display space. That is more that eleven football fields of space. More than 2,000 employees work to care for, secure, organize, and catalog these works so that they don’t deteriorate, get lost, or get stolen. They must display these items in a way that is accessible to each of 7.4 million annual visitors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvre

What does this have to do with Steemit? Well, I was trying to read the Steemit White Paper (https://steem.io/SteemWhitePaper.pdf), as all good Steemians should, when I found a quote discussing the Steemit voting model. Page 6 of the Section entitled “Recognizing Contribution” includes the following:

“Under this model, members have a financial incentive to vote in a way that maximizes the long-term value of their STEEM.”

The quote made me think about our responsibility as members and how I should act to maximize the long-term value of Steem? It appears clear that our ability to create and curate, the same factors that make the Louvre the most valuable 652,000 square feet on earth, will determine if Steemit becomes the most valuable social media platform on the internet.

Imagine that Steemit is an amazing, infinite display gallery. The designer generously allows each of us an unlimited space to display our best content. We can fill this space with valuable projects or we can litter the space with attempts to grab attention.

The gallery designer then turned the gallery over to us. As curators we influence the duration and order in which work is displayed. We can arrange an endless exhibit of interesting work for millions of visitors or we can fill the space with nonsense that a viewer must endlessly dig through for valuable posts. We determine what work is on display and what goes to storage.

Which approach will maximize the value of Steem?

Now, I cannot paint a Mona Lisa. Earlier this week I posted a picture of a turkey outside my office window. I will never produce a work that changes the course of human history such as the Code of Hammurabi. My most valuable post so far is about how I hate my bathroom scale because he is a liar. But as I post and vote on Steemit I am going to try to take seriously the fact that we determine the ultimate value of Steem.

Let me know what you think.