"Circular logic" is a great way of describing this.
A lot of users are realizing this and are discouraged from sharing their content. It could be argued that we shouldn't focus on the reward, rather, focus on the effort... but simultaneously, isn't one of Steemit's main objectives to reward people for their efforts?
Please read my reply to his comment. There is no "circular logic".
Even if your reply tracked logically, which is does not, its still circular logic. The justification for the payment is the payment itself.
I give you credit for not trying to pretend its based on the quality of your posts, but all youre doing is making the same arugment without the skill part.
Of COURSE the justification for the payment is the payment. That's how "price" is determined in free markets. In a free market, where nobody is compelled to buy or sell, the economic value of something is determined by what people are willing to voluntarily pay for it, or in this case what they are willing to up vote.
You, like many central planners, hypothesize that "value" and "price" are two different things--that something can have a very high price in the market but be of little to no "value", or vice versa.
Respectfully (and I'm not trying to engage in ad hominem here), what you are labeling as "value" or "quality" is just a matter of your subjective preference rather than objective price. And, you're cocksure enough to presume that you're estimation of value or quality is superior to mine or the market's. Such is the arrogance of all central planners.
But, what I don't get about you is that, even if you are right, you're so obviously wrong. By that I mean, even if its true that Steemit whales are currently rewarding crappy content that nobody is interested in and therefore that the platform will fail to attract users in the short term, this does not mean that it will fail in the medium term. (And by the way, there's no shortage of new users in the short term).
For it to fail, several things must be true. First, whales must be both stupid and unwilling to learn from their stupidity (that is, unwilling to change their voting strategy). I see evidence for neither. In fact, whales have take steps to remediate problems like bots, trolls and spam, and the recent reputation system implementation has gone a long way in that regard. Additionally, there's a concerted effort under way among whales to alter their voting strategy to avoid circle jerking and reward a large diversity of content. We are already starting to see the results.
Second, for it to fail, whales must insist on keeping control (and avoid dumping) despite that the platform is failing. In actuality, were the platform failing whales would dump and the coins would move into the hands of, presumably, people with better taste. Different content would be upvoted and new users wold therefore be attracted. Ultimately, the coins will end up in the hands of people who best understand what the public wants.
The only thing that would prevent this would be something superior coming along very soon and establishing a network effect advantage over Steemit. But, even if something like that comes along, it's most likely to be a fork of Steem (meaning that Steem holders would have coins on all such platforms).
Steem and Steemit are both essentially open source. Consequently, they will evolve quickly to meet the public's demand, whatever that may be. Given that, the odds of Steemit failing for the reasons you suggest (stupid whales upvoting crappy content in one giant circle jerk) are extremely unlikely.
Thank you for reiterating, that makes much more sense to me. It's much better to be optimistic. I was just throwing in my two cents (literally, haha).