Sure, but the reason we "have enough content creators" is because of a steem dream that sold a half truth. The "success" of any steemian is directly proportionate to the amount of skin they have in the game.
If we simply say earn by curating instead of creating we will have the same situation as we do now. A minority of accounts willing to invest initially so that they gain some nice sticky traction and momentum. People out of a healthy self interest follow the steem, for now they latch onto the bid bot trending creators that generally don't add much value that would attract consumers or curators.
If we can add earn more by seeing yourself as a start up and investing in your brand you will have equal opportunities to earn from creating and consuming "curating" which is less toxic than what we have now. I'm not disagreeing with you or wolf for once, I'm only saying let's please be honest this time around and include the reality that steem isn't a fantasy and just like IRL it's a pay to play game where you hope you can be confident buying in will have good results both individually and collectively.
Now the wolf won't see this as he muted me for my outspokenness on seeing his smartsteem "side hustle" as a conflict of interest for a consensus witness that claims to be a content creator but doesn't mention they make thousands a month from offering a service that preys upon the desperate, adds no value to the ecosystem, and isn't well managed in that his profit is clearly the focus not oversight on quality standards.
Don't hate the player, hate the game though right? That's his hustle and like a good politician he has played both sides of the field well here.
I prefer honesty or at least some integrity to hire a team that follows through with a, quality assurance guarantee for their clients content. But, being that, that this is subjective and not as profitable we have a free for all garbage dump of misaligned incentives and bad actors self voting, circle jerking, and bid bot owning their way into influential roles here.
Bid bots aren't creating anything good except for the owners, we have non profits here that curtail this negative impact but it's not enough. We need fresh blood, willing to invest, that requires a platform that is sustainable has some semblance of stratification or social mobility and good leadership.
We are headed in the right direction though with the Scot stuff and community building let's just not be so naive as to think a new spin on get your money for simply hitting "like" compared to posting shit will evolve this ecosystem. Organic growth user here BTW that wouldn't dream of investing even though I love the community and the concept. I don't buy into the duplicitous and fractured leadership we have as a dpos pseudo democracy. I don't think that's unfair or without merit.
I don't think that focusing on the money that can be earned here is the right approach either way. STEEM should be treated as a utility, a tool that supports/sustains other business models that are only indirectly related (or completely unrelated) to content creation. Blogging was a proof of concept use case, and Steem has a lot more potential than that.
Whether or not bid-bots are good/bad for the ecosystem is a red herring, because it focuses entirely on the ecosystem of creation/curation and implicit rewards that are not the whole picture. Even if they were, the role of a witness is to secure the chain and approve/decline hard forks based on their contribution to Steem as a technology (not as a blogging platform).
I oppose the Hard Fork because it's equally a red herring... moving deck chairs instead of focusing on long-term strategic development. When RC's and witness votes become the dominant reason people own SP (instead of curation and delegation for upvotes), then how the content creation rewards pool is distributed will prove to be mostly irrelevant. For that we need full focus on SMT's, not playing around with 50/50, rewards curves, curation curves, downvote pools, spitting into the wind, tugging on Superman's cape, or messing around with Jim.
Well said, I'm in complete agreement with all of this in its entirety! I have stuck around because of the untapped potential I see that others like yourself also see.
I need to check out your post that's been referenced a few times lately. And also follow you and/or convince you to become a witness lol..
I was solely focusing on the blogging aspect as that's what seemed to be the crux of this discussion here. I'm not into pissing in the wind or saving time in a bottle. But, I do like the songs. I am into blogging but only because I don't have anything else to currently offer this platform.
I got drilled by a steemian for expressing my views on what I feel a witnesses responsibility is here in my eyes. Being that this isn't just a POW chain and there is more to witnessing than securing the chain for consensus witnesses. As you said in its simplest form they need to approve or decline code from a is this innovative and efficient for the technology. But, for now I will quote a whale that's a witness that said "blogging is still the best game on steem" and until we define this place or have the communities and SMTs that bring utility and more use cases I get that we all feel compelled to do something..
Steem is different things to different people and I'm a late arrival compared to the emotionally and financially motivated users that are entrenched in that mind state. I never expected lambos or moons and I would appreciate a culture that doesn't focus on rewards only.