Look, Steemit is owned by 39 whales who own the vast majority of Steem extant, almost all of it mined before Steemit existed.
Steemit is what they made to profit from those mined stakes. Steemit's rules, selfvotes, votebots, circlejerks, and all the rest, are their business model.
You, and I, and the rest of the platform, are cattle that keep upwards pressure on the price of Steem.
If the only reason you're here is to gain rewards in an equitable system, ignore me, plug your fingers into your ears, chant 'lalalala' and pander to whales, buying their littlest votes from their bots, while they upvote themselves with the profits.
Just pretend the world is fair.
That'll fix it.
Or, you could be here to do something else. Communicate openly with others, discover the truth about how financial manipulation perverts social media, and learn how to make one that won't be perverted.
The folks that built Steemit to profit from Steem aren't going to break their piggybank because we want some too.
Maybe we can keep an eye out for platforms that will be fair, while we learn what they look like here.
Or, powerdown and go to Farkbork, where you'll get less than you do here.
I didn't come here for rewards, haven't spent even one satoshi of them, and cannot even if I want to. It's not why I'm here.
The basic scheme of Steemit could suffice to create a novel economic system, and the world is ripe for that kind of system today. Soon, other competitors to Steemit will erupt (many have already--Medium, Helium, Sola, etc.,) and Fakebook just bought a huge stake in LTC, so they'll be competitors soon, also.
Hashgraph may just be a way to do this. Have a look.
Good luck
Excellent reply. I din't know about Fakebook buying LTC. At least they were stupid enough to pick LTC. I have high hopes for Hashgraph unlike that TSLA-esque (tangled) mess IOTA.
I'm mainly here for the community. I've made some really great friends like you and I'm very happy about it. But I'm only with steemit for the mid term. My solution for flagging was to simply make it cost more VP. https://steemit.com/steemit/@vimukthi/a-philosophical-and-economic-outlook-at-steemit-sbd-and-flagging-and-suggestions-for-a-better-future-based-on-positive
I'm opposed to making flags regular as they are given the same power of an upvote while the good in community far exceed the bad. Upvotes vs Flags is a zero sum game.
If there are 50,000 active users posting, a $500 flag would only redistribute each of them a cent. An author who earned $5000 a week (which is deemed huge and unfair) only cost you 10 cents. What's with this war for 10 cents?
If more people earned more, then more people would compete for the same topics, style, content making that $5000 spread among few people. With flagging everyone will get their 10 cents, but nobody will get the continuous publishing of the content.
Really substantive reply.
Made me remember why I followed you =)
Thanks!