Only just saw this. I'll try put put it in simpler terms for you since you don't understand.
If you took $100, 000 USD and bought Steem and had confidence in the platform then you would likely vote for other people.
On the other hand, if after powering up, you saw the price of Steem dropping, you might vote for yourself, like crazy, to try and recuperate some of your losses, while your cash is locked in for 13 weeks. So, whales self-voting is a sign that they have no confidence in the platform. Actually, they all do it, they just have alt accounts and do it more subtly than Haejin. The level of hypocrisy on this site is astounding.
Think like a business man: they didn't invest their £100, 000 so that they share/lose it! Yet every time anyone powers down and sells their Steem for USD, where do you think that money came from if not from investors? So, from the investors point of view they can and will do whatever they want with their money, and pressure from other stakeholders, many of whom never invested a cent, just causes these investors to self-upvote, power down, and run with their profit. Long term, the only potential losers are the thousands of small investors who never power down.
That does not follow. If you invested money in a platform, and did not have confidence in it, you would simply withdraw your holdings. In this case, that means powering down immediately and during that time probably self vote on your way out. Otherwise you would be playing a dangerous game of trading chicken. Then you are no longer a stake holder, and the rest decide. Do you see this happening right now? Not the whales you are saying are making "votes of no confidence"
Whether you vote for yourself or others is orthogonal to this point. Given that you have stake, you act however you like within the system. All shortsighted of course, the hypocrisy.
You are confusing investing with participating within the system. Obviously that's a factor when people decide initially to buy into the system, that they see this potential for circle jerking abuse, but the sooner such short sighted investors leave, the better, in my opinion. Once they are gone, the small investors and remaining large investors have the chance to reformulate the system. Only problem is whether or not it is too late at that point.
Powering down takes 13 weeks- there is no powering down immediately, and having no confidence in the long term does not equal having none in the short term. You are looking at other people's motives in a narrow way.
Yes I have seen one whale power down and leave the site because he was harassed about how he used his power, and he didn't just self-vote, he supported many people, just not the dolphins that run the show. Actually, he powered up and down multiple times because he changed his mind a few times about the site.
In your last comment you said that whales couldn't just behave how they liked and now you are saying that they can. Of course hypocrisy is short sighted, but what many noobs here on Steemit fail to understand, is that you are being riled up to attack Haejin by the hypocrites who are doing what he is doing, but more subtly, and most of them didn't invest a penny. They just want Haejin gone for reasons of greed because he doesn't vote them up and he reduces what they make.
I am not confusing investing with anything! You buy Steem with fiat, you power-up and that's investing. There isn't just one way to participate in the system- there are as many ways to participate as there are people. If the system adds value to people's lives then more will join and it could be something great, but if the trending page continues to be a high percentage of shit posts that no-one outside of Steemit is interested in then it will stop growing.
Whatever happens, harassing a few investors will make no difference because it helps the dolphins and whales who are running the show rather than the minnows.
Just to clear up what I meant, because we are splitting hairs: what I said is still consistent. The latter case is an obvious statement that people have the freedom to do whatever they so choose. The former was a statement with qualification, that "Whales cannot do what they want without reaction from people that disagree". At least that was the intention, if it wasn't explicit.
Concerning investment vs participation, I'm not disagreeing with you. In fact my point was simply a statement that powering up is the investment, and the participation after is completely optional. A passive investor, for example, will just delegate to projects they like.
I think we see eye to eye on the topics that are of importance.
But actually, there is something that was brought to my attention recently, and I can start to see why you are saying what you are saying. I did not realize that there are people at the top we are not talking about that /are/ doing shady things. I need to investigate further... But my main principle still stands. If you want to target abuse, you target the worst abuser. Now I am trying to figure out whether haejin is actually the worst abuser. And how to cleanly identify something that is clearly bad for Steemit.
For the other points of contention, I don't feel they are worth clarifying, because they really detract from the main point of this conversation. Thanks for your comments.
You too!
I voted up one of your comments because this one was too old.