Great post, thank you for sharing. I have to admit that at first the idea of buying/selling votes made me uncomfortable, sort of feels like cheating - to me that is.
But when I saw this
it stands for bigger things than profit. It smartly reduces the chances of reward pool abuse.
the lights went on! After a bit more thought I suddenly realised just how clever the whole design actually is. If my aim is to support the Steemit community by creating and voting for good content, as well as ensuring sustainable success by prevention of reward pool abuse, I would need to buy votes to accelerate my growth so that I could actually be in a position to sell my SP. Brilliant!
One thing I was curious about, was the actual posts that are being voted on and then I started feeling a bit uneasy again - if the content is essentially 'good' but I disagree with the topic or discussion in the post...well I just don't know. Like if it was a food post about a meat dish and I was vegan, I might not feel comfortable knowing I'd possibly contributed towards the vote.
But that's just me, and maybe it's better to look at the bigger picture ;)
The example of voting on meat post being a vegan is a matter of difference of opinion and lifestyle. I am a Muslim and I know there may be a small number of people who won't like to vote for a Muslim person. I hope you get my point. Anyone who publishes a great post on Donald Trump deserves the votes for his hardwork and quality of his content rather than being avoided for posting about an unpopular figure.
The point is; we can keep our opinions with us and live with other poeple have other opinions. Everyone is right in his own thinking. Anyway, the topic does not concern me as much as copy-paste, plagiarized, badly formatted and useless content does.
I get what you mean, not to be stubborn about it, but I still think there's a moral issue too, but yes I agree that the quality of the post is the most importanr thing to consider. Thanks, let me stop commenting now and go finish my next post so I can try out SmartSteem :)
Good luck! And keep being awesome!