RE: Dr. The Leaping Koala_ my journey on Steemit # 7_ I am hopin someone's steeming along
Appealing to people's sense of social morality never works. When people start to do this, it is a sign that the incentives in the system are improperly skewed. The reality of Steemit 'Whale sucking' (forgive me for this term, please) is that this behavior exists because the mechanisms that were developed are flawed. Steemit was the first of its kind, and while I think Larimer intended it to be fair, the designs he implemented turned out to have exploits.
Frankly, you can appeal all you want to the moral nature of people on the internet, but even if some do commit to these principles others will not. What you must do in order to have a fair environment, is properly design the incentives. This goes for any form of society. You do not need laws when incentives are properly aligned (except for psychopaths, who do not feed off of the same incentive tree). You most certainly do not need to appeal to a moral choice over a selfish one. They will be one in the same. As far as I'm concerned, any system that separates selfish from moral is a broken system.
On top of this, there is no reason to believe that this Minnow charity principle you are trying to put forward is fair either. Going against the grain to give to a Minnow is a potentially dangerous over extension of kindness. Your votes should go to the curator who you felt wrote the best piece, and no other reason. If that person happens to be a Whale, then voting for the Minnow out of principles is unfair discrimination against the Whale.
While I don't object to you trying to make Steemit a more fair environment and work within its limitations, I tend to see them as futile. Steemit's incentives are a ponzi scheme, and this makes it a temporary platform. Keep your eyes open for another like Calibrae which might over come the failures that Steemit has stumbled upon. But until then, keep on blogging, because this is a block chain, and free from censorship from the ever oppressive forces around the globe.
Edit: fixed capitalization inconsistencies (for Minnow/minnow)
Excellent comment.
I strongly agree, until you got here:
"Steemit's incentives are a ponzi scheme"
Technically, they are not. The incentive is Steem, which you will receive. A ponzi physically requires new money coming in to pay out the guarantees to old money. Steemit only guarantees Steem. Not $.
Whether you can sell that on the open market is another thing, but it is by definition, not a ponzi scheme.
A fair response, though I dare say it is a bit of semantics. You are correct of course, but since the entire point is to convert that Steem into money, the result is virtually the same.
I think it's an important, and relevant, distinction.
If Steemit were actually a ponzi scheme (it paid out old investors from fresh cash from new investors from a centralized point of failure), then failure is an inevitable result. Eventually, you run out of "greater fools".
Since Steemit is given value based on market demand, it's not inevitable that it fails, any more than a multitude of other products produced in some kind of limited capacity that people want.