Glad you found it funny lol, and yes, I totally respect Matt's concern as it's also mine for the past few months.
This was my thought process:-
- Crap, I'm in a writing rut and haven't been posting.
- So many peeps are having fun promoting simple stuff and growing their stake relatively easily.
- I feel like I'm losing out having my SP diluted too much over time.
- Okay, I'll join the fun as well.
Anyway, in the end, coming to terms that everyone will try to maximize rewards, I'm beyond judging as well. We can either continue the way things are working now (it's pointless flagging or being pissed off at anyone doing the worst for the platform under current econs, and it's almost guaranteed that nobody will care over time as it's mathematically futile without being inconsistent), or we can align profit maximisation behavior with what's actually better for this platform which is by implementing the following modifications:-
- increased curation rewards,
- moving slightly away from pure linear,
- and some free downvotes.
The proposal is just about homogenizing profit maximization behavior into the most important activity on the network: voting on whatever we want to support to improve the platform. The max that we can go with this is a return of ~50% for every vote given out. 100% doesn't make sense, and the effects will be the same as 0%. Once this can be achieved, we should see more curation and everyone is more less likely to save it up for themselves. All we need is time for the new economic equilibrium to take place. As for "bidbots", it's still business for anyone wanting to promote stuff, the action just comes at a slightly higher risk. Still comes with exposure + stakes.
I hope Ned, top witnesses, "bidbot" owners come to understand this and consider the proposal seriously. Maybe Ned has considered it seriously, but nobody cared enough to offer a technical solution, which is kinda sad. I also don't buy the story that the solution will result in a massive computational burden on the blockchain. Of course, the solution will make certain groups slightly worse off relatively to what they have now, but it's at the benefit of the entire platform. It won't completely put anyone out of business too. We just get a healthier medium.
But all said, I respect if somehow Ned et al concluded that SMTs and Oracles will be the solution to Steem's stake-weighted voting problems. Just hope it'll work out. I'm just not quite convinced since it will still linger around. Steem's economic incentive is ultimately an equation with higher order effects on the platform and it's making the UX really terrible at the moment, imo. I don't think the whales are happy doing the worst for the platform either, but it's understandable since nobody wants to be the sucker.
In the meantime, I'm just tempted to maximise my profits by "bidbotting" to the max and avoid having my stakes diluted over time so I can continue supporting communities I wanna support on the platform. That's half the reason of this post. Curation is just not profitable enough and yet this is what I'm still doing with most of my votes because there are just way better contributors than me 99% of the time. The proposal can break this stalemate and give me better returns for what I like to do, investing in others. I suspect it's more or less the same thing for everyone. ~50% makes Steem a less calculative endeavor for all.
What do you think about this btw? You seem to care. I think I might've said this to you before but I really have been repeating this all over town that I don't remember who's listening anymore lol. But yea I wouldn't be 100% confident that the proposal will really fix things. It's just the best solution some of us could think of atm.