Save the Steemit Dolphins

One thing most people tend to agree on is that a thriving middle class is very important for the lasting success of any society. When wealth becomes polarized into the hands of a few rich people and a vast majority of poor people too many problems with crime and production start to happen.

Systems that are structured to provided returns through some type of competition and scarcity tend to pool wealth into fewer and fewer hands because of the nature of things. It is much easier for the rich to become richer than for a poor person to find the resources and abilities for lasting monetary success.

I thought it would be fun to take a look at the conditions and policies that created a thriving middle class after the great depression of 1929 and see if there is anything we can learn about what things we could perhaps try out to improve the growth of the Steemit middle class.

Just prior to the crash of 1929 society was extremely stratified with the great robber barons holding most of the wealth and power - a situation closely resembling what we see today. A thriving middle class grew out of this situation from the policies of FDR and the heads of industry basically pushed by social groups and the possibility of violent revolution.

Collapse of Value

In 1929 the dollar lost a lot of value and things ground to a halt. Fields weren’t planted, machines stood idle. Everything was still there but nobody was working.

If Steems value collapses too far we may get a redistribution of wealth but a healthy middle class can’t grow from this condition. What is more likely is that the wealth will pool mostly into one or two peoples hands and the block chain will not be profitable to maintain.

So how to make strong middle class of thriving Steemit Dolphins?

Government Work Programs

One thing that started building a middle class historically was the government creating job programs to hire anyone that needed work.

I’ve never been a big fan of making work just to employ people. However, if there are things that really need to be done but they are not being done like building new roads, trails or fixing infrastructure this can be a great way of employing people and building a middle class.

If there is not much to do, just making work reminds me of grabbing a broom and endlessly sweeping the shop or polishing the cannonballs to make the big boys think your working.

In the case of Steemit there is plenty of work out there with a seemingly endless supply of cat pictures to be gleaned off the Internet by unscrupulous posters or new material seemingly pulled out of the either by strange esoteric blogger scribblings. Plus numerous opportunities to vote on whatever turns your crank and get rewards for it.

Some people complain about bots in Steemit taking jobs through automation but I personally think it is a good thing. It is kind of nice to get a large number of votes even though a post hasn’t been personally viewed by a great number of people. (Automation is good, yes please do spread the bot love my way.)

Making new beneficial work might be helpful though - I can see a need for bounties for better educational materials about Steem or to create new infrastructure to better relate to the social aspects of the platform. Kind of like how the old GI Bill gave free education or the YCC rebuilt roads from government grants.

Social Security

Social security was first time in history a social net was put in place to take care of elderly people. This was very helpful for building up the middle class by putting more cash back into the hands of people who were the backbone of society and spent the prime years of their life building up the materials that to this day many of us benefit from still.

Social security for Steemit? How about giving some value to the people who have written hundreds of blog posts that returned a reasonable value. Having some long term rewards for posts would go a long way towards building up the Steemit middle class.

People have even made good suggestions for using advertising revenue from older posts to improve the price of Steem by requiring advertisers to purchase Steem to pay for ads.

By taking care of those that put value into a platform you can be better assured of the long term success of any venture. Besides building your success by using people in a disposable way is ethically questionable like valuing, ‘might makes right’ and ‘beauty, youth and wealth’, above all else.

Worker Rights

It is nice to have reasonable working conditions and a decent wage. If left just to businesses the wages tend to be as low as possible to maximize profit. Having a bunch of poor desperate people is actually good for a business to a point until things get so bad that nobody can buy any of the products.

Historically, labor unions and strong political parties lobbied for the workers and improved conditions building up the middle class.

In Steemit the curation guilds help greatly to give rewards to authors. This has helped spread the wealth despite the imbalance and is instrumental imho in building a strong Steemit middle class. I would make even more effort in this area until the wealth evens out more.

Taxation

One thing that really helped build the middle class after the crash of 1929 was a heavy tax on wealthy but taxes are never popular. They were generally lowered over the years although the government did not really stop spending thus leading the the situation where there is massive government debt funded mostly by borrowing from the wealthy and debasing the top tier fiat currencies.

Although taxing the wealthy on the Steemit block chain might seem somewhat appealing I doubt it would be easy to do or helpful. On an anonymous block chain a large account can simply be broken up into several smaller accounts and it is difficult to prove who really owns what.

Schemes that try to force people to spend their money or not acquire too much of it don’t really breed investor confidence and encourage the free flow of dollars. Besides who wants to be a part of a social network with scary things like tax collection that have historically been viewed with great negativity. (Hide your pigs and chickens the tax collectors coming, lol)

Inheritance Tax

Having dollars sit generation after generation in large foundations doesn’t really help build the middle class and is a bit of an unfair situation for the encouragement of new innovation. Capital needs to move around a bit to bred new ideas and spread out value to different content.

Here’s an idea: After a month of non-use a Steemit account could be up for grabs for the first person (or persons) that detects it and stakes a claim. This really appeals to the vulture in me. (I get his boots; you can have the bones, lol.)

Oh, on second thought maybe inheritance taxes have never been all that popular; perhaps it is better to just let old accounts get dusty and overgrown with Steemit virtual weeds.

Capital Gains Tax

Lots of regulations were put in place in the stock market after 1929 to try to put some value back into the hands of the middle class and avoid another crash. Stocks were mostly the plaything of the rich so it seemed like a good idea to regulate and tax it.

I’ve heard of people proposing a cap on the maximum payout a post can make in Steemit and this seems like a good way of achieving a type of employment or capital gains type tax on high dollar value posts. Perhaps it would be better than people flagging a post for making too much. What do people think?

New Things

Okay, enough history what else might we do to encourage the growth of the Steemit Dolphins?

Reputation

There has been a lot of discussion about using some form of reputation to drive the reward system. If it was used in conjunction with the wealth of an account this could be an option to distribute rewards in a way that is more independent of the acquired wealth of an account.

At first glance this seems appealing yet difficulties may happen over designing a system that really accurately calculates the reputation of an account based fairly on specific criteria.

Trolls and dissenting opinions are actually kind of healthy for a system in a strange way so long as enough people can be helpful in defusing any really hateful emotions that could come up. If your reputation is really import you may be tempted to just post fluffy bunny, unicorns and rainbow pictures in a mad cap attempt at tailoring your posts to the popular opinions and vernacular.

Too much reliance on reputation to drive the reward system is not good imho because so much of the time real change and interesting discussion is instigated by the fringe minority elements of society and by those not afraid to say what is on their mind.

Still some form of reputation if done fairly could be helpful in better dividing the Steemit pie. (Nobody take @fluffybunny just in case we go this route - I may want to use it as an alternate account for posting sugar coated pablum)

Friendship Building

Friendship is is the real bread and butter of any social network and really what we have been building a lot of value around historically. In the case of Steemit it is arguably what keeps people engaged and posting.

Collaborative art has been a really fun thing for building up community. Encouraging activities like this helps a lot on building a middle class.

Collaborative writing might be another idea. Perhaps a fictional work with different authors posting different sections of the story as it matures.

A 3D virtual environment that could show some of the latest posts and display some of the recent art or pictures that people do. If the environment could be tailored by different account holders of Steem it could be really fun to purchase 3D models for use from other people to setup up your own space.

I’m sure there are many things we can focus on to build a better community - I think this is pretty important for building a strong and lasting middle class.

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Thanks for reading! I’m very happy with the progress that has been made so far. I’ve recently reached a bottom tier level of Dolphin, thanks to everyone that has supported me. (Great sounds of happy dolphin laughter, lol, lol…) Dolphin graphic by @elyaque