Welcome to HIVE. HIVE is a bit different from other social media platforms in that it is built around a blockchain and cryptocurrency.
The site HiveBlocks.com shows your activity on the blockchain. Here is your page:
https://hiveblocks.com/@ildigrub
The page shows that you have no HIVE POWER. This is a big problem for new accounts because people need HIVE POWER for their account to work. The yellow bar indicates that you only have enough HP in your account to make 2 posts every 5 days.
The site is built around a cryptocurrency called HIVE. The rewards for posts come from inflation on the total amount of HIVE. The value of upvotes is determined by the HIVE POWER of an account. The upvote calculator shows the value of an upvote for a given amount of HP. I have 2600 HP, so my vote is worth $0.026 .
It takes about $250.00 in HP for an upvote to be worth a penny.
The voting works as follows. Each upvote consumes 2% of one's voting power. Voting power regenerates at 20% a day. That means a person gets 10 upvotes a day.
The ten upvotes by the $250.00 account distributes $0.10 per day. It the account upvotes 10 times every day, the total is $36.50 . So that is a good inflation rate.
As for your post, the destruction of discourse started a long time ago. Discourse is dependent on teaching people basic logic. The progressive school systems pulled logic out of the curriculum over a hundred years.
I find it funny that you trace the decline in discourse to Newt Gingrich as he was actually better at engaging in discourse than the current breed of politician.
I had been hoping that the rewards pools would fuel better discourse on HIVE. Unfortunately what happens is that people only want to converse with those who have invested in HIVE POWER. New users have a tough time on the platform.
Have a fun time on HIVE.