Every bidbot vote is not unethical. You are confusing your own opinion with reality
I'm with @valued-customer on this one.
What voting-based system could you name where the very definition of corruption is not "vote-buying?"
Either we want a Meritocracy or we don't. If we do, people cannot be allowed to buy votes. Imagine if one could simply buy the votes necessary to win a Nobel Prize or an Olympic Gold. What would such honors be worth ... absolutely nothing. They are ONLY worth something because they cannot be purchased. They have to be earned.
This is such a basic concept that I am flabbergasted that it even needs to be mentioned.
Go randomly pick 10 posts from Trending and choose the one you believe to be of the highest quality. Now go pick ANY post appearing on my blog. The best of the former vs the worst of mine. Now publish a post linking them both and ask your audience to decide which was better. Now compare the post payouts.
At what point ought one feel shame?
Although it hurts me to say, I have been ashamed of Steemit for a very long time.
Quill
I never thought the vision of Steem was to find the best post and make sure it earns the most.
I consider it a social media site where the "Owners" pick the winners. I am not arguing that they have done a good job with this.
I think many posts that end up on trending are important information or discussions.
I understand the point of view, I just think you have to make the assumption that everyone has the same goal as you do to consider it unethical.
I happen to think Steem is perfectly fair from a stakeholders point of view. I get to allocate exactly the correct percentage of the inflation pool as what I own.
I am not saying I think the stakeholders are making excellent choices.
If I hold more stake than I can vote with it is my possession and I should be allow to sell the bi-product of that (votes to whomever I please) AGAIN... Not saying it is going well. If they sell too many too often we end up where we are right now, no one wants to use it.
I guess the only thing I am saying is that it isn't as black and white as he claims.
DPOS I get it and it sounds good on paper, I just don't think I care for it.
It makes sense that the largest stakeholders decide the direction of a project, I just expected them to have more intelligence about what they are and are not good at. :)
@whatsup,
What you say is true (and articulately expressed).
Here's what's also true: A "product" has been created that no one wants, with the exception of the vote-buyers/sellers. Once everyone else leaves, which we are perilously close to, all those votes will be worthless ... as will be the SP that generates them.
It doesn't matter what's theoretically right or wrong if, pragmatically, it causes the entire system to crash.
You spoke of "owners" ... for that which is owned to be worth anything, there must be customers. This customer feels shafted and he is not alone. This cannot, and will not, go on for much longer.
Indeed, unless the Voice launch turns out to be an utter disaster (and @dan has more than enough money to ensure that it doesn't), September 23 may be the day that the STEEM/Steemit charade finally comes to an end.
It's too bad because I and a lot of other good people love this place. But enough is enough. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
I'm tired of feeling like an idiot.
Quill
@whatsup, you said,
Maybe that's the problem. When you start a project, it looks like it's the wrong way to get the biggest stakeholders first to decide what the functions should look like. Wouldn't it be wiser, if you want to create a good product/service, to really want to bring this product to its full potential first?
Everything seems to be the other way around here. First the investors and then the development up to the product maturity? That would be like putting a seedling in the soil and pumping it so full of fertilizer that it can yield a lot very quickly, although the fruit tastes much better when the process has enough time to get to the true goodness.
Take for example a service like WordPress or deepl.com. The former was an open source project and the developers were interested in the product and how to do it so well that you could be satisfied with it yourself.
Along the way, many minds have tried to make it good, just like with Linux. At deepl. I don't know how open source the whole thing was. But it was, similar to facebook and youtube, in an initially slow growth. While the users tried it, the developers learned to make changes and the programmers learned to write the code.
The investors came later: A company that wants to make first-class products chooses its investors well. These selected investors don't exist here. Anyone can join in and then say that they are an investor. On the basis of this logic, wouldn't one have to say that no matter how big a share someone holds, he should have the same voting entitlement?
Why should those with many shares be wiser than those with few? Or vice versa? It has nothing to do with intelligence, how much or how little I have. It's more about how well you want to make a product and whether you can imagine that the later beneficiaries will like it so much that it will inevitably develop into a mass market.
I find one can better rely on the intelligence of the many interested and curious ones instead of that of the largest stakeholders.