It is true that the blockchain is a completely different system compared to the current structure that we use in society. It is not as if there are some commodity's steemit can sell to profit from. Its only commodity is steem which can either go up or down dictating if you make a loss or a profit.
The main driving force pushing up the price of steem is the community. We can see that steemit works and that it isn't a dodgy platform and many of us try to accumulate as much SP as we can.
I feel bad when I constantly self-upvote myself. I think that currently there aren't enough people curating to keep up with the massive rise in the number of posts and users
However, I guess you are right that many of us have used other social media platforms and forums and we haven't earned a penny from it and none of us though a massive fit if a shareholder makes profit while you earn nothing. That is just how social media platforms have worked for years.
In the future I do see steem prevailing and doing well. We have already seen things like DTube created where the concept is 100 times better than YouTube and I'm sure with more development will lead people to migrate to dtube rather than using youtube.
All of us have an amazing opportunity now. An opportunity where people in a couple of years time wish they could have. I 100% support steem but all I'd say is that this investment is like any other investment and only put in how much that you are willing to lose.
My goal is to get to 10,000 SP before steem starts growing rapidly. I hope you have a great day too @exyle! :)
It seems like people are currently in this rush of making as much money as possible for themselves but I think in general there is a negative stigma around it.
Despite the fact I see people self-upvote I don't think I would want it outlawed as people should be entitled to be able to get some sort of ROI from their money and as exyle said how users don't get angry with those who make money with facebook or twitter and I think it may take away a stimulus for people to buy SP.
Your voting power will reduce about 1.5% with the each next voting at 100% of upvote strength. regardless is it selfupvote, or not. So it means you will have chance to upvote yourself or someone else just 10 times, and then you will have to wait about a day to recover your voting power to 100%
Linear. It depends on persentage of upvoting (100% by default) So the each next upvote will cost less than previous. you can visit steemnow.com it is good service to check your current voting power. There is calculator that will show cost of upvote at different conditions.