So first off, I take no credit for the idea as I mentioned at the end of the post, those users have been talking about it way more. Then again it's nothing genius to want to remove the burn posts by getting authors with content on their post to replace them while at the same time still helping to burn steem and maintain the sbd peg. That being said
and he then will more likely vote your post.
We'd vote them higher if we were going to vote them in the first place to make up for the 10-20% burn cut, not vote whatever is burning. Just wanted to make that clear as it seems some people think they can post whatever garbage now and get a free vote because 10% is going to sbdpotato, that would be the same as the initial problem of having those posts trending.
Anyway, I get the whole "they took x amount of post rewards in the latest HF, now they want to take more" but it's a bit flawed as burnpost has existed for over two years now and it gets paused whenever the peg is maintained (AFAIK). I see these initiatives as helping Steem and the authors in the long term even though right now it might mean less rewards for them in general.
I also hate to say this but I don't think we're in a position where we can complain about where the rewardpool goes or that our content is not getting "enough" rewards when there's almost nothing you can compare it to. Mark Zuckerberg is not inflating his FB shares to reward his 2b+ users. Bad analogy probably but you catch my drift, we're not using adrevenue/sponsorships like the usual ways users/authors/influencers monetize their content.
Anyway, fixing the peg, getting sbd back to being printed will help Steem and in turn authors again. This is just a "now" problem and won't persist once bull money starts flowing back in. Saying that "whales" don't want to reward content creators, after they're one of the main reason Steem has had any value for over 3 years (at least until distribution is a lot better and there's way more 1k-50k sp unique accounts having more power over the allocation of the rewardpool) and after rewarding content creators over $70m by now (ask yourself where the majority of accounts with a lot of post rewards on their steemd's are now) is a bit unfair, imo.
They see the need to burn rewards and put buy pressure onto sbd with inflated rewards, they don't want to clog up trending either since we for once are getting a good content discovery and pob going. So let's meet them halfway to help fund their initiatives while getting higher votes for the amount we burn to at least equal it out and at the end of the day it just means extra visibility for the authors (which is literally the main proposition of bid bots so there must be some benefit to getting that).
All of these arguments ignore the fact that a healthy social network is the best route to ROI for investors.
"...after rewarding content creators over $70m by now..."
is extremely disingenuous, because the vast majority of those author rewards were part of some scheme or another that either featured self votes or circle jerks.
The fact is that focusing on ROI and considering cash king is killing the social network.
Potato posts are a symptom of the disease of rapine. ROI is not the purpose of social networking, and trying to design Steem to produce ROI first reduces it's value to society for mere lunch money for whales.
Put the horse in front of the cart. Content imbues Steem with value, and ROI can dramatically result from that - but only if investors actually invest in the social network, rather than simply seek to extract returns from it.
Eliminate curation rewards completely. This focuses ROI on capital gains completely, rather than financial manipulation which so degrades the social network. The FAANGs reveal that social media is the most profitable business model extant, but only if the society is the horse pulling the cart.
Do that and all this crap haggling over upvote timing, burning tokens, and taxing creators to fund business lunches for investors vanishes, allowing society to interact naturally and produce extremely valuable networking. Focusing on extracting Steem into the wallets of whales kills the social network.
Investors should be building the network and looking for capital gains that result from building something of value to society. Society is the source of value, and financial returns aren't the purpose of society. Financial returns are a product of society that will produce capital gains, if the whales get their financial interests out of the way of growing Steem social media.
Based on looking into Larimer some time back, I think it was a great concept/vehicle he chose to experiment with. His goal was to figure a means to spread tokens easily, with little impediment/hoops for those receiving them. His logic being that the easier it is to get tokens into the masses hands, the better chance for mass adoption. I assume the unspoken part of this logic is that if it were to attain a certain mass it would then become unstoppable.
Given how addicted the masses are to social networking (damn it does seem like a drug to so many, just look at the zombies who can't pull their faces out of their phones for a minute), it would seem the perfect vehicle to achieve this. Sadly, he failed to account for human nature and how that would affect/skew when larger holders could set up their own structures within the main structure.
My dad was keen on the idea that many ideas looked great on paper, but would most often fail once people were involved.
I agree completely. I suspect that Larimer's own susceptibility to mammon and pecuniary focus factored into the susceptibility that Steem features to the same forces. I note that EOS has increased those susceptibilities, insofar as I have any grasp of EOS, which is as limited as I could make it.
The fat lady ain't sung yet, and Steem could still rationally redirect the incentives in the code to bring social interactions to the fore, and allow natural growth to produce healthy and productive capital gains to result from social benefits Steem creates, which I intend to await while that remains possible.
Things can seem impossible and utterly ignored until they suddenly happen, which is basically life in a nutshell. All of us are doomed to be food for something, and it's amazing we have enjoyable quality of life at all given the incredible array of things ready, willing, and able to eat us.
Also, I like posting here, and enjoy the content that challenges my grasp of reality, as well as the insightful criticism wiser folks than I can provide that enables my grasp to grow. I wouldn't even mind Bernie's flags if he'd add constructive criticism. However, rabid ad hominems are almost all I've ever seen from him, so prefer flags in silence.
Anyway, if Steem never pulls it off, either something else will, or we'll all go to our dooms without that transcendent social network that could be. I don't need lunch money from my social interactions, and wish more folks saw social networks as the more valuable wellsprings rational people seek than as ATMs.
Thanks!