Think of SMT as an admission that the first draft is fatally flawed and is not going to survive, and so the powers that be are hoping to avoid the collapse of STEEM by creating the very platforms that will "get it right" thereby killing steemit as a platform. IOW, STEEM might survive the demise of steemit as a platform.
This is all just me thinking out loud. I'm still a newbie so don't have much familiarity with the relevant facts and history yet.
I am starting to think the promises of SMT may be a ploy to retain users especially the many plankton and minnows that haven't drank the bid bot Kool Aid. Giving something to hope for seems like it would be a strategic move.
You are thinking like an economist. Keep thinking! My goal is not to create FUD; I think that STEEM and steemit are brilliant. But selfishness ruins everything. Can selfishness be prevented from destroying these wonderful initiatives? I don't know.
I don't have fear of disappointment. Just plain disappointment. ;)
Never have I been more of a cynic than after having access to and really examining this public ledger where the greed of people is on full display.
There are a few outstanding people left and, if it weren't for them, I'd probably be long gone.
I also thing Steem is brilliant but the creators may have been just a tad too optimistic about the intentions of the users to work together vs eat each other.
It is an interesting experiment, nevertheless.
Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. When the domain name system was set up, the people involved naively thought that people would respect the top level categories, would not speculate by squatting on hundreds of domain names, and would surrender their domain names when they no longer needed them. It apparently didn't occur to them that a market would emerge and that good domain names would sell for thousands of USD. (GoDaddy says that mine is worth more than $10,000 USD.)
I see the same naivete with the design of STEEM and with steemit. I'm willing to "invest" time into using, gaining experience with, and studying steemit, but I'm not going to power up beyond, say, $100 USD. I'm willing to spend $100 USD and not worry about losing it all. But I'm not going to get in farther than that.
I thought SMTs were a way to keep new money coming to support demand for STEEM.
That's also my understanding (as a newbie). But economists are trained to think analytically, to use "x ray eyes" to see through claims and explanations to what is really going on. This is done primarily by (1) looking at how the money flows, and (2) using "game theory" to see each person and constituency as a player in a game.
Well, I'm a philosopher rather than an economist. But I am trained in the analytic tradition, including a bit of game theory. You can't assume all the players know how the game functions, but I think it's safe to say that Ned and Steem.inc do. Once you understand that the the most important driver of the overall steem economy is more money coming into it, the rest follows pretty logically (I think).
Your vitae is impressive and makes my mouth water. Is it true that 100% human curation is critical, is essential, to both steemit and steem? I've been saying that, but what do I know? I'm just a newbie.