Are the right intentions for fixing Steemit behind these ideas? You're very smart with economics, and a great writer, but you've mainly applied these talents to your 3-pronged voting ring. Something doesn't add up. I ran the numbers in 9 directions, and the staggering amount of dollars exchanged amongst your accounts (enough to qualify a new whale) makes it difficult to understand your intentions here.
Priorities on the system and economics are great, and I support that, but if they're also weighted in with caring about the community and social impact. This leadership behavior decays the quality of Steemit. If big money does it without resistance, then others feel it's fine to do so, and said shit storm ensues. Blaming the system can only go so far. We’re responsible for each and every action we choose to take.
If your proposed changes are adopted, how your your behavior change?
We all want Steemit and Steem to succeed. Thanks for your time.
Even if I had made twice as much vote farming under the current system, it wouldn't make up my investment being down $4m from its heights. I doubt freedom's vote selling has made up for the $40m he's lost, and this basically applies to every large stakeholder participating. This is partly due to a crypto bear market but partly due to a completely dysfunctional platform.
We want to change the system to align selfish profit maximizing individual behavior with behavior that will benefit the entire system. It's true that many stakeholders refrain from vote farming: some are too wealthy to care, some risk losing more in lost reputation if they're leaders in other communities/projects, some are lazy, and some are truly just nice altruistic people. But what you don't do is design an economic system that relies on overwhelming altruism and fails in its absence. We don't ask people to be less greedy, if that had worked, this economic system would be doing wonders by now. People generally aren't in crypto to be altruistic.
The idea is simple: have an economic system that doesn't reward vote farming 4x more than contributing to the system through good content curation. Make it reward the behavior we want to see on here as competitively as vote farming. So we increase curation, but we can't do it to the point where all incentive to produce content stops, so we try to make up the remaining difference in other ways like increasing downvoting incentives by making a certain amount of them free.
How will these changes effect my own behavior? Great question. Instantly I anticipate all these farm posts will be knocked down to shit from downvotes which are now free to cast. And they don't need to be knocked down to 0 to deter me, just 30-40% and I'll go looking for quality content to upvote because curation now pays 50%, and if I do it well I'll likely get even more.
But not just me, everyone! The idea isn't to kick the shit out of me or kevin or haejin or freedom or any other stakeholder for the crime of pursuing our rational self interests under a broken economic system and losing everyone, especially ourselves a ton of money in the process. The idea is to fix that economic system so it compels us to behave in a way that contributes to the system if we want to maximize our individual returns. Farm posts like mine will be hit by downvotes, bid bot posts will similarly be hit. Curation will become the dominant form of returns of stakeholders. Content creators will be happy because they're now truly getting the rewards and exposure good content deserve, because people like me would vote of them as it gets us the most money now. And 50% of a huge pie is a lot better than 75% of next to nothing for the authors.
I don't want to vote farm because it's boring and it's shit. I haven't wanted to ever and have been speaking out about the economics here since the start of the year. But I can't afford not to if it just means losing stake to those who do, and it's not their fault either because this economic system is insanely stupid and they're likely just in the same position as me. If you want to truly change this system, it's obvious: don't reward vote farming 4x as much. Reward the behavior you want to see most on the system with the highest returns. It really is that simple.
Edit: why would I be attempting to introduce any changes for so long if I just want the good times to go on, as some have been implying? It's not like any other system can reasonably lend itself to higher mindless vote farming returns.
I've read a lot of your stuff on this topic and this single reply is probably your best piece of respectful writing geared towards and relating best to those with alternative views. Thank you very much for taking the time to reply in this manner with some empathy. No one wants to be told they're wrong for their beliefs, so a neutral reply like this helps me refocus and stay on the platform when hope is low.
While I'm annoying on this out of passion for an alternate side of this, I care equally in my own way. Regardless, the tone and eye-to-eye approach reply helps me understand better through your eyes. Everyone has different motives and pain points.
I'd also like to point out that no Steem has been lost over this bear market/downtime. It's been made in buckets for many, even if not at an optimal return rate. I suggest considering the adage that you don't make a win or take a loss in fiat value until you hit the sell button. This is just paper value at the moment and it will return to previous heights over time, and then higher. We've all lost the same % in value, but I understand that millions of dollars vs my scale is a different type of stress/pain point.
Thanks again. Really.
Yes, just to reiterate, I want to implement changes that make it no longer competitive to vote farm or sell votes. So people platform wide who engage in such brain dead activities, including myself, become economically compelled through eating free downvotes to do something that contributes to this place, such as curate effectively, whose rewards I want to see increased. I've been advocating for this since the start of the year.
I really thought this was super obvious, but if not, well that's what I've been trying to do all along. I can't lead by example in a broken economy. It's too expensive and too ineffective. I'm promoting sensible economic changes that'll put a stop to all this rubbish I'm currently forced to take part in.
If good curation pays just as well, and it's free to kick people in the nuts for vote selling and self voting, why would I want to engage in the latter? Of course there's no surprise that so many are engaged in brain dead vote farming if we pay them 4x more than if they were to do something good for the platform, so lets stop doing that! There's no hidden agenda here, let's fix this and turn this thing into a working content discovery platform that pays for good content as well as incentivize curation with competitive returns.
Shouldn't we somehow test before assuming that the proposed changes will indeed impact the behavior as you expect ?