Steemit As Direct Projection of Delusion of "American Dream"
People should receive rewards for posts which contribute something positive to betterment of humanity:
- posts about important technological and scientific inventions
- posts about technology improving the quality of our lives,
- posts spreading idea of human rights, lgbtq rights
- posts spreadng idea of equality and justice etc.
Or even posts with some honest, passionate art (not some pretentious dishonest art to make Steembuck).
Majority of posts which are favoured are about complete bullshit , which bring nothnig to betterment of society:
- posts about economics of Steemit
- Steemit profits
- meaningless events from someone's life
Or in many cases pure verbal masturbation. These posts very seldom teach you anything of value related to things which actually matter in life.
In 99.99% of cases these useless posts get upvoted so high just, because they are posted by wealthy Steemit members. Wealthy vote each other up to multiply and cherish their greed so they can become even wealthier, making the gap between them and regular members even larger.
Then every regular user jumps on these whale-posts in order to get a pathetic chunk of the wealth. Breadcrumbs of beggars.
Occasionally, some regular user gets lucky (ggod place and good time) and get their post upvoted by some whale, who do a bit of charity to feed their ego and have sense of social accomplishment. What it does is nothing more but feeding the illusion of Steemit Dream, just like so called "American Dream".
There is nothing special or revolutionary about Steemit. It has become nothing else but plain and simple projection and expression of our scoiety, which is driven by greed and profit, where human and environmental well being are always secondary to profit. Projecion of our society where care for environment and humanity is counter productive to economic model.
My message to regular users:
Don't get deluded by thinking that whales are here to do charity and support your activity. They are here to perpetuate their wealth even more. That's what they care about the most. Any pathetic act of charity on their behalf is well calculated in their costs vs their ego boost.
If this was true, we would see wealthy users becoming even more wealthy and regular users losing influence.
From the statistics I've seen so far (unfortunately I can't find them right now) the opposite happens - whales have less and less impact and there is a growing "middle class" capable to distribute an increasing part of the rewards or at least bring the whale's attention to more valuable posts.
Steem wealth needs time to trickle down to more people. Those who are benefiting the most at this moment are people who discovered Steem 4-5 weeks ago and have managed to earn some reputation regarding the quality of their posts. Once they get rich, they will distribute Steem Power further. This process needs time.
It sounds exactly like wealthy elite in power, in our society, is talking about economics and trickling down from the perspective of privilege, offering "solutions" which actually never change the status quo.
I have just checked steemstats, and I have to admit that it seems that about half of your upvotes have actually been for regular users, not whales which is uncommon practice between whales.
Sounds similar but there is one crucial difference: the responsibility factor.
In "real" world power comes without much responsibility - e.g. you can trigger a war and reap the benefits without bearing the consequences.
Whereas in Steem power is combined with taking responsibility. The more power you have, the more you lose when things go wrong. If you start acting selfishly, in the long run, you have much more to lose than acting for the benefit of the whole system.
That's why we start to see behaviors like this. Try to put yourself in the whales' shoes. Steem's incentive structure makes them need to address the very problems that you raise, as otherwise they will be the biggest losers.
We cannot remove unfairness. The world is pretty unfair and has always been like that. But what we can do is attach responsibility to power. And for me this is what Steem is all about.
There is no responsibility if you are in whale fellowship of mutual admiration.
I have not heard about a single whale being punished, lost their power and forced to leave.
Maybe some got a bit of slap once for their greed (just like bankster elite does) but then they go back to their greed.
Just, becasue we have created cultures which have been unfair and rewarded and conditioned unfair behaviour, does not mean that we still have to be stuck in this obsolete social concepts and this way of thinking. It is time to start thinking out of the box.
If they behave as you imply (I don't know anything about it), they will be punished quite severely - their Steem shares will lose value. It's hard to imagine a more appropriate punishment.
What would you suggest instead? Some sort of committee trusted to make fair choices?
If such a committee does not have skin in the game, sooner or later it will start abusing its power - we know this for sure, that's the human nature.
If it does have skin in the game (by owning Steem shares) - we end up with what we have now: whales having decisive upvote power.
Steem is not perfect and it's not meant to be 100% fair. But it's the best incentive structure we can come up with, at least on this planet.
If you really have some out-of-the-box ideas which can improve Steem, that's a perfect topic for a post.
Please note that I've been able to do this only because earlier in the game some whales voted on my input. I'm the very product of whales actions.
This is very honest answer to admit that you have been simply very lucky. Not many would admit that. They tend to think that they are something special and that's why they got upvoted.
"If you really have some out-of-the-box ideas which can improve Steem, that's a perfect topic for a post."
I have posted many within last 2 weeks. Many about Resource Based Economy, for example, but have not got any attention. Anyway I don't care about profit, I would be just happy if people got interested in important scientific and social info I post, especially my posts about The Venus Project.
I have posted few silly posts out of experiment but I try to pick majority of my posts to have some intellectual and social value.
I think it works like this: if you do nothing you get nothing. If you make an effort you have a chance to get rewards. But making an effort does not guarantee rewards - in this respect Steem is not fair and never will be. Here your effort only buys you a lottery ticket. And this is how life on this planet works.
So I was not just lucky. I also made an effort. Just as you did.
The american dream does not guarantee you a success. It only opens up the possibility. Thus Steem is not a delusion of the american dream, as your OP suggests. It's actually the very essence of american dream.
Everyday Parenting Ideas: I Hate You! 6 Tips for Surviving Teen Angst:
http://www.parentfurther.com.php53-8.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/resources/enewsletter/surviving-teen-angst?gclid=CKXdo_TxuLwCFZDm7Aod3jsAxQ
(Not that I think your post is anything but an expression of artistic brilliance and radical insight)
Have you noticed this initiative: daily-pick-of-hidden-gems ?
Here is the most recent edition:
https://steemit.com/life/@dragonslayer109/daily-pick-of-hidden-gems-15
This is how "regular" users can tackle the problem - help the whales to make better choices.
The idea is nice, but would be nicer gavvet actually upvoted these posts.
If he thinks that they are great, then why not upvoting them. Obviously he just looks for another idea to post something in his blog to get more buck while giving nothing back...
Can't say that about dragonslayer109. He seems to be upvoting those posts, which is very nice action. Athough his pick is very subjective and rather related to what he gets attracted to, in his life.
So you suggest s/he makes all this effort to write daily-pick-of-hidden-gems posts and can't be bothered to upvote the posts s/he recommends? It's hard for me to believe it - that would be absolutely irrational behavior which hurts her/him the most.
Yes. It is actually factual. Non of these posts were upvoted by him. Just go and check all these posts yourself or simply go to steemstats.com and type gavvet on the left.
In "Recent activity", you will see all the upvotes he has given in last week. All upvotes are on his own posts, with exception of 2 users (jacor & crazymumzysa) whose posts gavvet seems to be upvoting on regular basis.
So it only means that @gavvet prefers to act against his own interest. No system can prevent that - the main assumption here is that most people act in a rational way to increase their well-being. It's @gavvet who has a problem, not Steem.
You can't do anything about it, the system will implode and collapse by itself in due time. Some people will lose the money invested and life will continue.
If it all goes the way it is, it is likely to happen
And that's fine. When you invest money, you expose yourself to big gains but you also take the risk. And that's a fair deal.
You are being upset about some people having power of upvoting whatever they want and at the same time you predict they will pay a high price for this privilege because they'll lose the money they've invested.
So would you want to be in their position or not? It's interesting to watch people wanting only the upsides and rejecting the downsides.