RE: Meet Steem's #1 Author!
Thank you for posting your thoughts, despite the risk we all take when doing so in any controversial topic.
I think it's a little unfair to call those "bribes", but I get your point. I think it wound have been appropriate for nanzo to keep the 20 and shrug. One could also interpret this as Jerry's way of paying for the time of a whale, which is valuable and could be otherwise spent not reading transfer messages in the wallet. At least he bothered to check how often they each voted for him, thereby having a reasonable reason to assume they might support him.
"Most put a tremendous work on the platform and don't post anything as their are busy to keep the system running. Just check github to see how many people are involved, but are not having your visibility."
I totally agree with you. However, if one is capable of outsourcing part of the technical work, could it not be potentially valuable to have a more public witness (whether that be Jerry or not?).
"Like said, even if I get flagged for this, it had to be said. If I would have been one of the top whales I would probably get some pretty good dollars for the comment."
I have been very pleased to see that the community has done very little comment flagging here today. I'm also happy to see you with those "pretty good dollars" you mentioned!
I'm coming from a former socialist/communist country, where freedom of speech was forbidden. I will do fight, even with risks for this fair right that so many take for granted.
He already posted that he wants to be a witness and the posts have been already voted by the whales, and if they real have read the posts and wanted to make him a wintess they woul have done it, without the incentive, so for me it is still bribing. Why did he not send to lower guys that voted him as a witness? It is economics, I would buy myself also in when if it is needed and the system allows it. This is to get back to the point. I do not condemn that he is doing it, just the way he tries to come out clean and point the finger on others.
The point of the witness is not to outsource the work. Let others do it, that have the passion for it, not for the money. I wonder if 50% of the witness would still do it if only the elcetricity and machine use would be paid, but this is another topic.
I'm happy also, because we can have an open debate with normal arguments.
Also I have to thank you for the normal reply, with marked points. I like having constructive discussions, where we can find solutions.
For the record...
A bribe absolutely requires quid pro quo by definition.
There was no quid pro quo here. This is a sales tactic used in marketing, soften the target with a gift. It's distinctly different than an offer that requires quo to get your quid.
This may be a semantic argument, but I think we should call it what it is, a sales tactic not a bribe. You can't have a bribe when you are allowed to keep the quid and not even respond to the quo request at all.
It's not really spam either, because if spam came with a $15 reward for doing nothing, we'd all be like "gimme more of dat spam".
It's a marketing tactic, and he's an internet marketer. I suspect that alone is enough to turn you off, as I've noticed a lot of other people with a similar opinion (honestly, including myself).
We can debate around this for hours. I was born in a country where corruption is endemic and a lot of the "gifts" are kept without doing the requested thing, as nobody will try to announce that he tried to bribe someone. For me, this marketing tactic is acting as a bribe. The "gift" is to influence one on the decission of doing something, which could have been done freely till then.
According to Merriam Webster Dictionary a bribe is:
Also I thank you for the constructive comments.
I was being a bit of a pedant. I still don't think this is a bribe because what is given is given freely before any chance of whether there will be a reward is known.
However, if you had used the word "corruption", I wouldn't have made this objection. Not that I'm saying it is or isn't, but I wouldn't have pointed this out.
If you called it "vote-buying" or maybe "pandering" (an option with a negative connotation), I would have been 100% unable to do anything but agree.
See what I mean about me having a penchant for playing Devil's Advocate?
Ok, let's put it as vote-buying from whales. Pandering would be to redlightish for the level of the discussion we are having here.
Gladly to find common sense.
As I said you can initiate a bribe and the guy can keep it without delivering it, but this is another part of the story.
There ought to be a term for a failed bribe that gets kept with no reward.
"The idiot tax" is already taken by the lottery here in the US...
Great discussion @lexiconical and dont you find it interesting how Reddit never really had any issues with self upvoting but the secondmoney is involved, and its steemit where you get PAID for the upvotes , then it becomes a whole dramaabout fairness but people never cared when it was for wothless karma but when it bcomes real money its all of the sudden a big deal becauyse people are all secret;ly just jelous! they want to convincethemselves its not fair, so they can justify their not making much money here , or so it seems XD haha lol its funny tome, like, i never ever heard of people on reddit arguing about some of this stuff, but as son as steemit comes alonga nd actually pays people in steem and that steem is actualy worth real Bitcoin then people freak out! But what is funny is that the STEEM that is CREATED is created BECAUSE of the whales and their steempower and thats how a proof of stake copinw orks rwhere you get to make more coins over time if you hold coins and hah these outsiders trying to argue that its not fair to pay certain peopel certain way on a platform that they had nothing to do with building or spporting, its just funny, its so ... i dunno its like someone coming to your company and getting hired and then trying to tell the boss how to pay his employees or something.... because the writers here no matter what content they produce, are all producing content and that si what gets clicjked and is why peopel come here and use the site and the whole idea of the site is to be a social media experience so when you have people dedicating tgheir time to posting content here and you see them getting paid, thats the platform actually working and when peopel dont even question the idea of wether steem token has value or not, when peple just would rather fight OVER the tokens themselves, then that is a GOOD thing :) I would ratherpeopel fight over the tokens (becauyse they ARE valuable) then fighting over wether or not the tokens have any value at all!
In that way, steem has already won the hardest battle and I feel like that accomplishment should not be overlooked
anyway great respoonse lexiconical! I loved your response justr wanted to add to the story here!
See you in #trending !
"In that way, steem has already won the hardest battle and I feel like that accomplishment should not be overlooked"
Great point. The fact that Steem is valuable enough that people are willing to flag and fight over it is, perversely, sort of a good thing!