Wonderful response, Quinn. Thank you.
It's amazing how often we need to be reminded how beneficial freedom is. We so often want to control others just because bad things happen. Bad things will always happen and focus on controlling others just makes more bad things happen.
At the same time, boundaries are good. Art is framed by the boundaries of the canvas. Systems and structures can be tools to create wonderful things. The balance, I think, is to find out what changes increase well-being for the greatest number of people (nash equilibrium type stuff) and what changes are just power grabs. We can certainly do a lot of things manually but at some point it makes more sense to automate and systematize what most people in a community choose as a default approach anyway.
Example: organ donations went way up when they changed the form to be opt out instead of opt in. Simple changes like that can help improve the world. The challenge for us is much of the world is not all that simple (and neither is the motivational and economic realities of the STEEM blockchain).
So I agree with what your saying but what your saying seems way to vague. Its like your hinting at something important yet not really getting to the practical and relevant point.
Which is kinda weird because usually it seems like you are not affriaid or shy of getting to the point and saying what needs to be said even if its controversial or difficult. So maybe its just ur not taking it seriously enough since its just a comment on my post and ur busy?
I don't want to make any assumptions, but I would like it if you refined your comment to be a bit more specific/practical/relevant to this post as to what "should be done".
I really don't think there are many if any people in this community who would give more comprehensive feedback in this matter than you.
Best Regards Brother~*~
My thinking at this point is that some things are broken AND that many (if not most) of the top-down fixes have unintended consequences that are worse (which I think you outlined well). My comment doesn’t have a specific answer at this time because I don’t think we’ve found one yet. As much as the free market of downvotes might solve this, the reality is it’s not working. It’s expensive to downvote so many avoid it and prefer upvoting others instead. I’m optimistic a systems level improvement can be made, but even some of the best suggestions (a separate voting power pool for downvotes, for example) also have some unintended possibilities.
Sometimes the best answer we have is admitting we don’t have answers yet and continue to evaluate new options. Sure we can say “let everyone do whatever because FREEDOM!” but that attitude (taken to an extreme) might sap some of our motivation to continue working to find a systems level solution that increases positive benefits for more users instead of just a small handful. People want a meritocracy, but they are quite difficult to create in practice. It’s a combination of building fair systems with simple rules (but no simpler) combined with personal responsibility.
We’re still working on the optimal combination of code changes and community action with tools we already have.