Are any witnesses opposed to this idea? I would gladly vote for them, even if it doesn't make any difference.
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Are any witnesses opposed to this idea? I would gladly vote for them, even if it doesn't make any difference.
See, with witnesses we don't even know their political stances with regard to digital liberty. For example if I were a witness I would release a document, such as a statement of intent, or a set of guidelines which would outline how I would make certain political decisions. It is my opinion that users have rights and only in certain specific cases can those rights be violated.
For example, when there is a hack or it is a security situation then I am for violating certain rights as the last resort. This would be to protect the system as a whole, or to protect the rights of a majority of users in the system. So in the Ethereum hack for example I was one of the few who was for the fork specifically because that was a security event and by doing the fork we would protect the rights of the majority of the people, as the majority of people were set to lose for the benefit of a few, or perhaps just only one hacker, who exploited a bug.
In the case where Steemit was hacked and accounts were taken I was for a fork because in my opinion restoring the property to their rightful owners is a way to protect rights even when the website or software fails. We had the capability to do the restore and I was for it.
But in this case, this change in economics doesn't seem to avert a black swan, or to protect the network, or to protect the vast majority of the network from a hacker, but more to be based on people wanting to get quick profit out of the network by parameter tweaking. It doesn't meet my criteria as being the "last resort" option to resolve the situation, or the only solution, or even necessarily the best solution, but merely a proposed solution which is only justified as a way to try to boost the price and if it fails then it could end up costing more than it's worth.
If Steem goes over $1 because of this change then maybe the community will ultimately forget about the changes in economics. There have been previous changes in the economics, prior to the July 4th payout event, and the changes also to deal with bots, and these changes were welcomed because the price of Steem went up as a response. The current change in my opinion will drive the price down, which will create a bad perception of Steem, and on top of that it is a very high cost change. A basic risk assessment would tell you that if you are making a change which has an unusually high chance of failure and which also is catastrophic in terms of impact then it's going to fall into the high risk (red) category.
High risk changes should not be taken lightly. By high risk I mean the risk of this change is damage to the perception of Steem, and a change in the economic foundation of Steem not so much the inflation because no one seems to like that, but the original promise the protocol itself made to the participant who powered up with the understanding that it represented locked up Steem for 2 years, and who made the mental notes in their head expecting the Steem to be locked up for that time period. It is very possible that people might be unhappy with the outcome of this change if the price goes down for example to 1 cent.
I see this as a very high risk low reward move. Yes inflation is annoying, yes it would be better to reward the bloggers and curators more, but when you take away something people were expecting to reward another group of people who weren't expecting it, then it creates a problem of perception. It's no different than if I steal from my friend to give a gift to another friend who really deserves or needs it, even if nothing is actually stolen, it's the expected outcome that my friend had that was changed, which now forces them to change all of their strategies and plans.