@timcliff, I generally agree that more SP should result in more "control" over the content curation procession. HOWEVER I'd really like to hear your very wise and now tenured experience on "purchased" SP vs "organically earned" SP.
My position is that someone who comes here, spends the time, makes the effort, does the work and earns the SP organically should have much more curation power and most assuredly without question.
But when you can "buy" influence? Isn't that how elections get rigged? And further, damaged? I understand "investing in the platform" is value for us all, and super dee duper important! I've done what little I can do myself (around $550 USD paid in on top of what I've earned organically in my scant 31 days here) but as you well know, (and thanks for the advice during the episode) I have also been the devastated recipient of a massive rage flagging campaign that nearly sent me packing (had I been a mere mortal minnow with less self-esteem and confidence, it definitely would have caused me to quit!) That user merely made a 1 day old account, and put nearly $20,000 USD into it just to go on a hater campaign against a lot of very kind people who were hurt pretty badly by his capability to simply "buy" influence. We cannot all withstand that nor combat it with our own money in many cases.
I know "good" always wins in the end against bad actors, but I really want to hear a justification for "buying" influence from your most credible, completely respected point of view. If you please?
Thank you, from one of your many admirers who cannot believe how much help you dispense every day in the #steem-help channels on chat. So admirable. So needed. So... help me understand your position on this hot-button topic? :D
The platform offers many ways to become vested in the platform. Some users invest time/effort, and other users invest money. We need both to succeed. I think that everyone with SP has a vested interest in seeing the platform succeed, regardless of how they acquired that stake.
Also to point out - if there were no users willing to buy STEEM/SP, then all the rewards the platform handed out would be worthless.
Thanks for that. So you agree with Neo.
Having been the receipient of unwarranted attacks by a user who bought power with no concept of the platforms etiquette or community standards, tying voting power to the money worries the piss out of me.
I can buy a ton of steem, drive the value up and make us all rich, and I'm all for that. Why is that tied to influence, which in my opinion needs to be earned in a community.
I think I'll just buy a country - the people in it who worked their asses off to build it and create community in it be damned.
Well to try and relate it to your buying a country metaphor, if you were to come in and buy a million dollars of SP, you would be paying all the people who helped to build the country. There are a lot of users who use their influence for good, and there are a lot of users who use it for 'bad' (subjective opinion). The line between good and bad is not as simple as people who bought their SP vs. those that 'earned' it. There are people from both ends of the spectrum on both sides.
Alright. You got me there. That's the "click" my brain needed to make. Because we both know it's incredibly unlikely that some Gates or Buffet level gazillionaire is coming to take us away-hey-hey, so I suppose as long as there is some kind of equilibrium of sorts on the balance scale between earners and buyers, all will sort it self out.
I guess I was hung up on a metaphor that might look more like Bezos, buying the Washington Post simply so he could influence elections through such a widely read venue. That's no longer pure, and that makes me uncomfie.
Thank you for your time. I understand your position. I'll just have to bust my ass to catch up to Warren Buffet before he buys the joint and makes us all eat McDonalds for breakfast (if you know about Buffet, that's what he eats every morning LOL)
BTW, for future passers-by, a clarification on my remark. I did NOT say the group of people buying their SP was only going to include "bad actors", just that bad actors could be in that group.
Capital markets have long operated, and do so because they provide gains, which reward investors. The white paper clearly declaims against financial manipulation, which clearly is happening on Steemit, and only possible because VP is weighted by SP.
In May many users came on board, and the price of Steem skyrocketed, rewarding investors very well.
Why should SP be allowed to financially manipulate curation, when capital markets create far more rewarding gains from investment? BTC has no social platform which can be used to mine for profits by manipulating content, and I know of no investors crying that it was a bad investment.
There are a great many vehicles for capital investment that similarly are profitable, and do not manipulate a social media platform for ancillary profits. Steemit is the only platform that this is possible on, and there are problems that are unique to that profit vector.
How would severing the financial manipulation from curation, by severing the SP weighting of VP, be harmful to investors, or Steemit?
Steemit is not the same as BTC. If investors wanted to invest in BTC, they would invest in BTC.. A lot of the value from STEEM (and other alternate currency coins) is what they do beyond the simple financial transactions. One of the main 'value added' propositions for STEEM is the blogging and rewards platform. A lot of the investors that invest in STEEM/SP, do so because as a stake-holder they have influence over how the platform is run.
Well, investors traditionally have control of the Board of Directors, through which they manage the company. Steemit provides nominal management direction through it's corporation, and capital gains as Steem appreciates.
About three years ago BTC was valued similarly to Steem today. Recently BTC was $3000. Were Steem to appreciate to even 1% of that value it would return ~20000% to investors.
Dipping too deeply into the rewards pool chases away the guests, and leaves only the whales swimming in the pool. When the guests leave the Steemit, it's over, and even the whales go home.
Why potentiate that outcome, when to do so you're potentially disabling a 20k% return? Because, as BTC shows, that return is only a fraction of the potential return to the investors in Steem.
So what stakeholder influence exactly is needed to augment those two traditional avenues, and how will basing VP on SP, and all the problems that result from that, benefit those investors whose fortunes it threatens?
Sorry, I disagree with your premise. In my mind (and a lot of people's minds who have invested in SP), having influence based on the SP you buy adds value and is a reason to buy.
If no one ever purchases SP, then how can it ever be worth anything?
Note, I said it was very important to purchase SP and have done so more than a large percentage of users in my short time here. BUT, the question was NOT about buying SP alone. It was about buying INFLUENCE with it. It means that for example, some uber rich dude could come in and out buy NED and DAN -then what - do we welcome our new overlords? What if that overlord is a government?
Why would I buy SP without the influence it gives me? If the government or some rich dude tries to buy a ton of SP, the price of Steem will skyrocket, and I'll be crying all the way to the bank.
He who holds the money, makes the rules. I hope that works out for you. I still want to hear from @timcliff on this. Which is why I asked him by mention at the beginning of the question. Other opinions are certainly unstoppable on a public comment thread, but it is his I am interested in hearing the most.
The same reason to purchase Steem applies to every capital market in existence, and every crypto currency. None of those markets enable financial manipulation of curation on Steemit, the buying of influence, or would prohibit in any way your crying all the way to the bank if Steemit were not manipulable by SP weighting of VP.