I'm having trouble grasping your moral theory on this one.
If a street musician makes huge tips, should they stop playing as frequently?
If a street musician gets tips from the same person automatically, regardless of what they play, should they stop playing as frequently?
Do you really think the drivel that gets the most airplay and earns the most money (top40) is really "the best" (most deserving of financial support) music on earth? And furthermore, do you really think that these top40 artists should just "take a break" and "give the little guys a chance"? Are they immoral to rake in fat stacks of cash-money-dollars for their low effort, unoriginal remixes and re-releases and remakes?
Here's another example,
If a retailer makes a lot of money, should they close their doors in order to give the other, smaller retailers a chance, and by doing so force their own customers to find alternative stores to buy their daily supplies?
If these "winners" do "take a break", is it virtually guaranteed that the "other" less popular options will "get a boost"?
Please explain.
Ever stayed and watched a successful Street musician? They clear the tips out frequently, but leave a little bit in there to show they have got some support for social proof. Not too much though, as they don't want he audience to think they have already earned enough.
With your other examples, they don't have an open wallet and the immediate earnings aren't visible to the customer at time of purchase. They are a false equivalence.
And, I took no moral stance as far as I recall, I gave my opinion after observing behaviors and processes. I will leave the moralizing up to you.
I'm not sure your rush-to-disqualify is valid.
Everybody knows the "artists" on the radio make more money than your local garage band. They don't need a "public wallet" in order for anyone to reasonably draw such a conclusion.
Everybody knows the "global-super-store" makes more money than your local mom-and-pop sole proprietorship. Nobody needs to see a "public wallet" in order for anyone to reasonably draw such a conclusion.
Your entire post revolves around "fairness" and "quality" and "abuse".
Heck your opening sentence is explicitly about "community standards" (ethics).
These are all clearly ethical/moral/normative concepts.
I'm not trying to "put words in your mouth", I'm just trying to understand, if I distill the essence of your post, how do your core principles apply to a non-steem, real-world economy.
Should every millionaire hollywood hack script-writer and low-effort singer/producer/performer do more to "give back" to "the community"? Should we boycott radio and television shows that are syndicated or re-released on DVD and or streaming because they're "not original enough"?
Drawing conclusions and watching the money tick over are two different influences on behavior. Not seeing it directly distances it from the viewer with actions not getting an immediate feedback loop in the eyeline. I can buy a mobile game for 2 dollars, and not see the app company's billion dollar revenue tick over.
As said, I presented points after observation of process and behavior on Steem and from a community perspective. Interestingly, one of the people who were abusing an autovote lost that autovote recently, likely for that abuse. While that person can do as they please, so can the voter and if that voter feels that they are being taken advantage of in a way they do not appreciate, they will move on.
It is a consumer decision. There is no (long-term) supply without demand and the consumer is the one who demands. Consumers can be fickle, and while some say "take all I can while I can" and burn their audience, another will find ways to evolve and offer value to that audience to maintain them long-term as tey can offer some kind of trade that gives the sense of a win-win.
Ok, you seem obnoxiously reasonable.
Let me just ask you one more thing,
Do you think people should be downvoted into oblivion by larger accounts, simply for posting "low-effort" content like "word of the day"?
Can you email this to my wife? :D
It depends. If they are doing it ten times a day, Selfvoting each and farming Steem, probably. If it is a once a day kind of thing, I don't see the issue with it. I think intention matters.
I would also say that the value of the post would matter to all kinds of sized accounts too. If someone was getting 30 dollars on these posts, I would suspect it would be getting some downvotes, but a dollar or two (from the community) and no one would mind. When it comes to low-effort content, if many people think it is value adding, that is what it is. However, that changes when someone (especially with a large vote) believes their own content is valuable consistently.
At the end of the day, I think that while imperfect, the Steem voting up/down system is somewhat more honest than the hidden algorithms that platforms use to manipulate rewards for some over others.
I will add:
When it comes to freedom of speech concerns, downvotes have nothing to do with it as there are plenty of interfaces that will show it regardless and it doesn't remove it from the blockchain. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that a person should also be able to earn on what they say.
Let's just say, hypothetically, that the Chinese Censorship Brigade decided they wanted to create an account (or buy an existing account) with (a relatively small) 2 million steem-power and start obliterating any accounts they didn't like (anything not written in Chinese).
Now imagine they managed to get their account up to (82) rep, and then power-stomped your blog (@tarazkp) into (-11) rep so ALL of your posts were automatically hidden behind some sort of vague warning message (strongly suggesting you're an unscrupulous person).
Would you be, you know, "totally ok with that", since "there are plenty of interfaces that will show it regardless" and nobody "deserves" to make a few steem-pennies off their blog if a whale decides to ambush you?
Who would you complain to? Or would you just go somewhere else?
Yeah, I'd be fine with that. It would definitely be interesting to see them get their account up there (they would be better off buying one already there - right?).
It would also be interesting see them stomp my blog down to -11, especially since I am relatively certain it wouldn't go uncontested. Then, I would also be interested to see what happens to the value of Steem the token and if SMTs would supplant it. This would then mean that in order to stomp my blog down, they would have to also make sure they had a lot of other tokens also.
Really though, I don't mind that much all in all - it would be very interesting to see how the community handled such a thing as it would be a very good test of the decentralization mechanisms.