Two sides of the same coin? on one you get whales who upvotes each other's post regardless of content quality, and the other you get minnows buying upvotes on their post regardless of content quality.
But afterall its a free market on the Steem ecosystem where everything is open and permissionless, people can do what they want and face the consequence whether good or bad.
But one should be very aware of the long term result of both vote buying and circle-jerking where the platform's overall content quality gets chipped away to a point being too toxic to be a part of. Having a situation where this happens will of course hurt the price of the token and hurt the investors.
So while both makes money on the short term, are everyone willing to let it go on and continue to hurt the platform?
Everything in moderation i guess, of course its okay to upvote your friends and of course its okay to get a fighting chance at going hot/trending. But as usual humans will go to the full extreme if there is no control in place.
so should there be a control?
Self-control seems too much to ask, as does delayed gratification.
The free market system is unfortunately not as free as we may think because even without the constraints, human nature is repetitive and what happens and is failing in the real-world is being dragged into an environment that could do something fundamentally different.
It isn't decentralised if we are all acting on the same learned behaviours as those we are trying to escape.