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His has little to do with how smooth or anyone else acquired there stake. It is simple math / economics of supply and demand.

You are starting to sound like a politician now, and to be fair, I hate them fuckers for taxing me/us, I get it that you want to maintain the status quo, though me being the "customer" that has the money to invest, we used to be called the people to respect, as in the customer is always right yes? I know the world has gone insane, and the customer is now disrespected, so hey, I will make my own blockchain, and then we see who wins, forced versus do what you want!

You are projecting a lot of stuff on me that doesn’t really apply. Really my goal is plain and simple - to make the STEEM price go up. Regardless of how your current position as a user places you - our objectives should be aligned in that regard.

I am projecting nothing on you, I stated I will not be investing whilst sbd exists, I want nothing from you, I never will, leave the victim hood at the door step, and have a free fucking video.

This is brilliant. "One third of a billion years of evolutionary history behind that".
Absolutely brilliant

Ha then you believe as I do, that we have walked this earth longer than text book history? or just an off the cuff comment, either way, nice to meet you.

Same here! For what is worth, I agree with you that the continuous bickering about bidbots and self-voting that is eating the community from the inside like an auto-immune disease is a bad thing.

However I see the SBD currency as a very powerful feature of this blockchain.

See, the way I look at it, STEEM is the equity - holding steem is like holding stock in a company and whether you have it as liquid steem or as SP doesn't really change the nature of it. I would compare SP with holding real estate: much less liquid, but still an "investment for the long term".

On the other hand, I see SBD, because its design as a stable coin, as the real cash of the ecosystem. Even if it's not very successful at keeping the peg, the fact that there is something built-in with the goal of stability makes the whole system a lot more powerful.

You might want to check an older post of mine here: Historic evening: first beer paid with SBD in Luxembourg. I plan to bring a couple of friendly joints on accepting SBD for drinks and snacks. Being able to directly spend what you earn by writing, posting pictures or streaming video games is a huge draw to the community. But I don't want to spend STEEM because I want it to moon. If I believe STEEM will be worth $100 in a year, I would certainly not pay 5 STEEM for a beer today. On the other hand, my friend Luka from Gudde Wellen would not accept customers paying with STEEM knowing that when the taxman comes to claim euros, the STEEM he accepted at 1€ might be worth 0.15€ ! Luka needs a stable coins to sell his beer and SBD is providing something that is approaching that. And we could grow the community to tens of millions if people were able to buy beer with the proceeds from their articles.

If you did not like that one have another, hey they are free

Please go ahead and make your own blockchain. There are only a few thousand of them already, we definitely need another one.

Actually, though, I do agree with the marketplace approach you suggest and don't discourage people from trying. If you think your idea for a blockchain is better, then indeed we should "see who wins". If it really does turn out to be better, then we all win.

There was nothing political about @timcliff's reply either. It is absolutely the case that who mined what has nothing whatsoever to do with SBD functionality or economics. If you can't address the substance of the matter without resorting to personalizing the debate then you likely have either a poor grasp of the issues or a weak position.

Well I have a strong position in the real world, I have owned and run multi-national companies, I sit on 100 acres of owned land in a country 5 over from my own, if that is a weak position I will take it all day long, as far as steemit goes, like I said, I will not be investing whilst there are different currencies, plus all the bickering that goes on on here regards self voting, bidbots etc etc, That is simply the way I feel, and it has nothing to do with mined or not mined.
I respect both of your opinions, and fully understand why people want to keep it the way it is.

For what it's worth - nobody here is trying to convince you to invest. What you do with your money is entirely up to you. If there are parts of the project that you are put off by, then it is completely understandable that you are choosing not to put your money into it.

Nether smooth or I are arguing in favor of preserving the status quoe. The post was written to explain how things currently work today, but it was not intended to say that they have to stay that way forever. Both of us are frequently discussing changes with the community, stakeholders, and developers. We are interested in making Steem the best it can be.

On the particular change of SBD, there are a lot of different views on this topic. While you (and many others) are against having it, there are also many others who are strongly in favor.

Part of the DPoS process that runs Steem is that the views of all stakeholders are important, and the ones with the most stake are the most important. We have to factor in all of the views of the stakeholders to decide/determine what is best.

Right now the stakeholders are in support of preserving and trying to improve/fix SBD. I'm not trying to say that to convince you it is right, or try to say that it will always be the case, but it is the reality of the situation we are in right now.

From my point of view, this is it ok, I would invest in steem if it was only 1 token, steem, I said this at the start, I reiterate that point, this though is only my view, you and smooth both have more followers than me, and you could, if you wanted, do a poll, to see who wants, is in favour of SBD, and who is not, I did this, and got a resounding 100% against SBD, though you could argue and rightly so that I have very few followers, and that would be correct.

Now for the status quo bit, .

They are, but indirectly. Witnesses work for the stakeholders. Stakeholders want to protect and grow the value of their stake which, at present, includes wanting to grow the user base (which includes communities and content providers).

If, hypothetically, stakeholders decide that users, communities and/or content providers are not a positive force in protecting and growing the value of their stake, and want to change priorities accordingly, there is nothing witnesses can do to stop that. Any witnesses who try will just be voted out.

Bottom line, this is a system based on stakeholder authority and interests ultimately. Everyone needs to decide whether they are on board with that. No one can force you.

As I understand it there are 47 whales, I may be wrong, I can only rely on people like abh12345, and when 47 people control a platform that wants millions of people, yet wants to only service, upvote those they like, circle jerk, know, the system has zero chance to survive.

there is nothing witnesses can do to stop that. Any witnesses who try will just be voted out.

Quotes from smooth not me.

If you want a fair and sound system, people should be looking at quality of articles, write ups, and voting at present it is not working that way, steemit is a reflection of the real world, those with mined stake, the most power are making the rules, was this the intention? you tell me.

When quotes like that are banded about.

there is nothing witnesses can do to stop that. Any witnesses who try will just be voted out.

By smooth, it reminds me again of politicians, tow the line or else, and that I do not like, that is the way I am, you can choose to be what you like, a frog even if it suits today, I care not, I am though talking about my point of view, not yours.

The system of governance that we have is not perfect, but IMO it is the best option that there is. Those with the most stake have the most to lose, and are therefore given the most authority over decisions. It is not a guarantee that they will make the right ones. Unfortunately a fully democratic process (along the lines of one user, one vote) is worse since 1. it gives way more power to people who may not really care about what happens since they have little to no vested interest, and 2. it is gamable by abusers who will create multiple accounts to have multiple votes. Finding a system that is perfectly fair and will make everyone happy is probably unachievable.

As I understand it there are 47 whales, I may be wrong

I don't know how many 'whales' there. The cutoff between whale and non-whale seems pretty arbitrary to me. For example, when I look at my votes received on steemdb:

  1. I'm only receiving about 30-40 GV worth of votes individually weighted more than 1 GV (that's about 500k SP), and 30-40 GV is not nearly enough to get voted in as top 20.
  2. The rest come from a very long tail of smaller votes that seem drawn from a fairly continuous distribution (indeed the entire set of votes seems to come from a continuous distribution, other than maybe the top few worth only around 20 GV), not one with distinct categories of 'whales' and 'non-whales'.

So, yes SP matters and if you want to have voting influence you will need to buy SP or earn SP, but the idea that only 47 whales' votes matter is wrong.

I respect both of your opinions, and fully understand why people want to keep it the way it is.

Typo - people = stakeholders

True that.

I don't know why you think anyone cares how many acres you own. On Steem if you have a lot of SP your vote counts for a lot and if you don't, while you are welcome to express your opinion, it doesn't. You don't get passport rights on your non-SP wealth.

From what you wrote there it sounds like you aren't going to be investing in Steem any time soon (there are soon going to be many more tokens, not less, and it is a pretty good bet that bickering isn't going away either, though people will probably find new things to bicker about), which is your prerogative. I was completely serious that if you think you can do better and build a better blockchain, you should. I'm not here to convince everyone that Steem is the One True Blockchain, only to do my best to help people understand what it has to offer and to do what I can to make it the best it can be.

I thank you kindly for your time, as for my land, yep I call it mine, and maybe I should not have brought it up, though in context it fits, I digress. I wish you a perfectly pleasant day...........

Likewise, and please do drop me a note if you launch a (better?) blockchain. I'm curious what you come up with.