All this vote buying, selling , and trading is such a hassle for our poor witnesses, and now there's even a middle man trying to get a piece of the pie.
As the top 21 witness positions are determined by the stake of a select few plus some underhanded dealings anyway, wouldn't it be far easier to simply auction off the top 21 witness positions twice a year and add the proceeds to the reward pool?
It would spread a little money around, and it would probably yield about the same list of witnesses we have now, with the added benefit of being transparent and showing what a witness position is actually worth.
Anyway, the article that probably triggered your post was edited into the dark nether and looks quite different now.
im of the opinion that the spread itself is too skewed. I'm not calling for a crazy redistribution of rewards, but it seems to be that it should not be that you have to get to the 20's to break even... (im exaggerating a little bit, but it drives the point).
However, until we have a very strong middle class that can elect, because that is the word, elect leadership, then we are bound to let the giant stake holders make all the decisions for us.
We have the eerie feeling a middle class can't emerge by merely posting content; DPOS and stake-based voting without the "right" culture seems to favour making money with money over making money with content, and thus concentrate wealth, and the large stakeholders aren't about to change the rules as things are working as intended for them.
Wouldn't the emergence of a strong middle class then be achievable only by large stakeholders selling and the rest buying rather large chunks of Steem? That is, mechanisms outside of the Steemit/content world?
Just wondering. And fearing, a little.
there is that element there too, but because we have an inflationary currency, it is possible to do it with content alone. Let's not forget there are dolphins at the moment (with the current inflation rates) and whales (with past inflation rates) that have made their stake by adding work to the platform.
Now, it's the long path... it's certainly taken me for example a long time to become a dolphin, but I'm trying to take the longterm approach... now I could be completely wrong about it, can't say I know I'm not..