This is hilarious.
For me, I can't seem to get over how everything is monetized, it seems like a game yet it's supposed to be social. Our brains work on different systems if there is money involved, market norms vs. a social norm. The latter we act more altruistically and for the good of the group, the former instance we act more like selfish rational economic actors. (Dan Ariely gives the example of, after a Thanksgiving meal, you give your mother in law $300 for her service, it's a fair price, unexpected and nice, but it will be offensive and sour the whole day.)
Maybe as the system ages the mechanism itself will move to the background and we can act entirely socially and without awareness of the system. But right now the system itself and the game it's created carries the weight over socializing and being genuine.
This is crypto's first foray into social engineering, I'm glad I get to be part of the experiment!
I up you on 'This is crypto's first foray into social engineering'. It's a very new concept that will sink in with time and we'll move it to the background of our thoughts to focus on the Social Contribution aspect more.
Two other points:
Not necessarily true. Too many assumptions. If you don't know the future market cap you cannot say the rewards will be small. If you don't know what currency the receivers have in their home countries you again cannot say the rewards will be small.
The cost of living in Silicon Valley is just extremely high and most people assume small for themselves is small for the majority of the world. At the same time Facebook has a market cap of over 200 billion? If Steemit has a market cap of 50 billion and there are 5 million users then how much in payouts would there be per day?
I would say yes you are right but there are also some aspects that can't be denied.
As Steemit grows and is adopted more and more its market cap will also naturally grow and Steem will be more valuable hence the daily payouts will be higher. But realistically speaking we can't expect it to grow forever and will hit a cap. Once it hits that cap, with the natural expansion of the user base the rewards will inevitably lower.
Another point to be considered is the user base distribution. Yes there will be some to whom 1 SBD will have more buying power than to others but if you look at the current reality: current user distribution of platforms, population per country (considering the development of the country), internet connection availability, education, society influence etc. I believe the majority of users will not have a big advantage between the USD (which is the parity the SBD is keeping at) and the local currency. Yes, there will be a minority of users for which a post's reward is the equivalent of a month's salary but they will be a minority and it is because of the reasons I mentioned before: these type of users don't have access to all the things the others have so they will have less chances of benefiting from this high conversion rate to local currency.
I hope I'm not wrongfully understood. I strongly want everyone in the world to benefit from the Steemit ecosystem and Steem would end world hunger and other issues if possible. But we also need to be realistic and analyse the facts. The world is not going to change in one day.
...or as Karl Marx would say: the end of the High Capitalism Era.