Community post

Help Fix Steem's Economy!

Help Me Fix Steem's Economy!

While most people would agree that something is wrong on this platform, many can't quite pinpoint exactly what the problem is. This is known as the Steve Buscemi's face effect.

Me starting off with that joke basically means we're stuck with this as the thumbnail

Lately, I keep hearing a lot of complaints like:

People are far too greedy on Steemit
We have a problem of bad culture and need to educate people to behave better
Keep your hands to yourself you creep or I'll call the police
How the fuck can people just get away with self voting 10 times a day?

These are all misdiagnoses of the underlying economic problem which I've written directly below in bold so lazy shits can just read that and go straight to the comments.

Problem: Under our current economy of linear and 25% curation, it is roughly 4x more financially rewarding to participate in content indifferent voting behavior (eg. self voting, vote selling) than content reflective voting behavior (eg. curation). This has lead to a complete failure in our ability to function as a content discovery and rewards platform.

Now because it takes painstaking hard work and extraordinary talent to create high quality content such as this piece you're reading, many large stakeholders have opted to sell their votes to garbage ads or self vote their own rubbish. Supporting actual good content will, on average, cost you 75% of your returns in lost opportunity, and fighting against the rubbish on here will only set you back a mere 100% of returns. Thus, it becomes too expensive for many of us to not take part in the very activity that, collectively, is destroying this platform.

Imagine you had a community that introduced a new law which rewarded a person $1000 every time they take a shit in public. Would it be surprising to discover, after a while, that the streets were flowing in diarrhea? Would you try to rectify this situation by asking people to be less greedy? Or perhaps try to educate people to shift from a culture of shitting on the streets to one of, well, not shitting on the streets? Would there be a point in asking how the fuck do you even manage to shit 10 times a day?

Of course not. You'd change the law that rewarded shitting in public so highly. Similarly, don't be surprised if people engage in the exact activity we've decided to reward the most: vote farming (be it vote selling or self voting). Now, our approach to rectify this should be clear:

Mission: We need to devise and implement a new economic system that rewards the behavior we want with the most competitive returns while sacrificing the least in terms of trade offs.

You get the behavior you reward the most on here. The idea is to close the gap between content indifferent and content reflective rewards by incentivizing the former less and the latter more in terms of returns. @kevinwong and I prefer using a combination of measures (slight superlineararity, higher curation 50% and 10% separate downvotes) modestly, which together, should be strong enough to give good curation a competitive edge over mindless vote selling and self voting. Of course other measures are perhaps available, and they all have their trade offs. Some are really fucking bad ideas, and I might write about them another day.

It is quite frustrating to see the overall lack of clarity and urgency in terms of efforts being directed to fixing this problem that's completely undermining our platform over the past year. Focusing on UI or communities as a solution is like getting diagnosed with testicular cancer and deciding that the best way to treat it is by getting a nose job and your anus bleached.

The good news is that the failure of this system is entirely fixable; it isn't at all something inherent to decentralization or stake based voting, nor is it some moral or cultural problem. We can change the economics here to incentivize the behavior we want instead of swimming through our diarrhea filled streets.

If you believe something should be done to better align rewards with desirable behavior, please let witnesses and Steemit Inc know about it. Do it in person if you're attending Steemfest 3. Kevin will be there and he'll give you a private lap dance if you help us fix the economy.

Replies (360)

Look, I can see you are getting frustrated that you have not been able to galvanize the community to your cause. Let me point out the problem: you are combining two separate issues into one.

I think you would get broad agreement (with a significant exception that I’ll get to ina moment) that the economics of steemit are not functioning optimally.

However, let’s consider your proposed solution, and specifically your mission:

Mission: We need to devise and implement a new economic system that rewards the behavior we want with the most competitive returns while sacrificing the least in terms of trade offs.

The key point is “the behaviour we want.” Everyone wants something different, and therefore you will have great difficulty galvanizing the community as you would like.

So let’s get back to that significant exception I mentioned. I am talking about the whales who have the power to drive behaviour on steemit regardless of what others want. This is the real problem with the economics. It is the single reason why I will personally NEVER power up. Why would I do that when some random person I don’t know has the power to eliminate the value of my account at any time should they so choose?

So I will continue to move along with my $12 account value so that I don’t have to worry about that happening. The consequence of that is that my up/down votes are utterly meaningless. And so I live with that.

Considering that the vast majority of steemit users are actually in my position, whether they realize it or not, we have a problem. But your solution does nothing for us.

Now I think there are two things that can make a difference. The first is to remove variable voting power, that is the whales lose their power. People have responded to this saying it can’t work, but frankly I don’t care. The current system definitely is not working.

The second is to get rid of ALL bots. Now I am an intelligent person, but This simply isn’t my field. Again I have been told this is basically impossible but I find that truly hard to believe, and actually quite sad if the greatest minds couldn’t implement that if they actually tried. I realize that the real answer is they don’t want to, but hey, a guy can hope.

No we dont. The proposal you guys are making is a really bad idea. Its bad from so many points of view that its hard to even start to point out the least bad effect this would cause.
There is only 1 fix to this. And that fix includes banning certain behavior. That will never happen.

I dont know if youre making this proposal with good intentions in mind but everything points to you guys using your position as whales to increase your ROI.
Youre using your position you gained by throwing around a few $ through curating to push a profit maximization change for yourself. I mean just look at the positive comments from the people that would be most screwed by this.
This is a tragically bad idea that would change absolutely nothing for the better except increase the current curators profit.
You dont want to adjust to the system. You want the system to adjust to you.
Its even more tragically bad since in principle its just "trickle down" in disguise....
You had dtube move towards 50% curation few months ago and it changed almost nothing in curator behavior. You still had dtube and Kpine supporting most of the quality content creators.

What youre essentially doing is cutting everyone else earning potential, wrecking bots, alienating passive investors that couldnt care less about curating (that by the way will always be passive), assuming large accounts have some kind of glorified talent in recognizing quality content, trying to grab more power for yourself (your right of course)...

You assume STEEM is just a content monetization platform when in reality its a token distribution platform.
The change to content placement STEEM could actually benefit from, which ofc doesnt require a such a radical change, is a STEEMIT UI design change, a bot upvote filter.

You disguise your proposal as a "lets fix trending", "lets make quality content win"..... and you know who will make good content win?
We will!

Me and Kevin! So give us more money.

If you want to do something for the platform, focus on marketing. I just hope this never passes or STEEM will literally go down the toilet.

This change wont bring any change of behavior. It will change the way the behavior is exhibited but it will stay the same. As it did always.
This change is incredibly dangerous because its essentially a aggressive move by the curator whales against the community in an attempt to grab more power for themselves which they can do, because "curation" has always been seen as a major strength of the platform and the 5-10 $they drop on your post has a huge impact on an individual. (_wow someone gave me 10$ for something i wrote_) Therefor you assume these guys can do no wrong.

Problem is that we moved away from the "gift" economy which is a extremely small part of the larger picture.

Not one thing that is written in this post can you hang your hat on and say: Yes this change will lead to improvement in this "area".

Not one thing would change for the better, unless you are a curator large account like Kevins and Trafs, then you would get a higher ROI.
Instead of creating a fairer distribution across the board, creating a middle class, they want to empower themselves to a higher degree.

They are essentially saying that by increasing their returns you will be better off.
That is wrong on so many levels.

Passive investors will remain passive investors since not everyone cares about curation.
The "potential" (and i mean this in the broadest of definitions) for new whale curators popping up from what we have now is close to zero, and the passive whale accounts actually openly admitted they would still look for passive income instead of curating.
And the most important part... There just isnt enough curators to assume they would be able to cover current platform quality creators with upvotes, to justify a cut of 25% from author earnings for everyone on the platform, alienating passive investors and a move to 1.2 superlinear
Curator behavior would not change and everyone else would take a huge cut.

You would be essentially increasing community dependency greatly on just a few large stake holders that already have a great effect on the gift economy.
This is ludicrous on so many levels.

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.

You're the guy who once tried to tell me you were earning a 10% profit by spending 15 STEEM and getting 15.023 STEEM in return. I thought I'd start there.

You're claiming these folks have an ulterior motive, so I'd like to point to that link again. I have reason to believe, based on the things you said there, you have an ulterior motive. You're here to defend your approach where you purchase votes and hope to squeak out tiny profits. That comes first to you, and your content doesn't matter, it's just there.

By the sounds of what you're saying here, you don't want curators to come along and vote for your work. By the sounds of what you're saying here, you'd rather earn your .023 STEEM by pulling 14 meaningless dollars out of the reward pool with purchased votes, instead of pressing the vote button ONCE to earn MORE than .023 STEEM by utilizing your own SP as a tool to earn curation rewards.

A bot upvote filter would be like sweeping your kind under the rug at this point. If you're removing $14 out of the reward pool just so you can make .023 STEEM, you're wasting resources. That action of wasting resources should be downvoted and that$ 14 returned to the reward pool.

I have reason to believe you'd prefer things stay the same so you can continue exploiting the reward pool, so you can scrape pennies off the floor. The platform you want sounds like this to me:

I have a two dollar coin. If you would like to earn the two dollar coin, you must first give me a 10 dollar bill, then scrub my toilet. Then you can have your two dollar coin.

You contradict yourself quite often. Your actions speak louder than your words. You don't want to see people with SP earning more, yet you pay people with SP 15 STEEM so you can earn .023 STEEM. I think your head is screwed on backwards. You wrote a post, pressed many buttons and paid people 15 STEEM so you could earn .023 STEEM. Why not powerup that STEEM in your wallet, press the vote button once, help someone, and earn more than .023 STEEM?

@steemmatt applauds you:

You have some major balls, but this is the type of voice that opens eyes instead of kisses asses.

But to me you sound more like an ass kissing yes man here to apply spin and defend a few vote dealers and their goddamn Monkey Posts.

Anyway...
^{Have a good day. Was good to see you again.}

First off all the 15 STEEM thing did perplex me for a day which is why i did a little test. It seems that HF20 screwed the reward pool balance and it was dropping for quite a while. I did not notice that the first few days or so. The 10% thing is actually correct. Just click 100% powerup, if reward pool balance relatively stable, which it wasnt at the time, you get your 10% ROI.... I was not correct about that at the time of our first discussion.
But thats beside the point......

The rest of the stuff about "ulterior motives" you wrote is basically nonsense, im sorry to say. Wanting to make more money is not an ulterior motive so everything you write below are just attempts at personal attacks stemming from strawmanning my argument. Them using their position to push forward a proposal so they can earn more money is in no way sinister or unexpected.

....But you do that a lot, haha, actually makes your comments an interesting read.

wasting resources

Haha. I always found these claims interesting. People actually coming forward and essentially saying:

Your actions MUST coincide with my values! If you do not conduct yourself based on my set of values then you are a resources waster and you should be punished..

You paint bot upvotes as wasting resources, completely disregarding that the SP delegator made a conscious choice to delegate that SP for use of the community. What their motivation is doesnt matter. What matters is that the community has a choice of using that SP.... SP that would otherwise be out of their reach, to empower themselves, promote themselves, support others...whatever they decide to do... @acidyo Like the guy that boosted my comment here. We dont have the stake to boost but we can use our own hard earned SBD to show our support.

We have a choice and tools we can use. And THAT is better then begging.

What is wasteful about that?
Of course the answer is "Nothing"...
Its just waste of resources because you say so.

You don't want to see people with SP earning more, yet you pay people with SP 15 STEEM so you can earn .023 STEEM.

Haha. As i said, its quite entertaining to read your stuff because you straw man so beautifully.
I dont want to see people with SP earning more.. Yes. That is what i said.. Bravo. haha. :D

Thx for tip on how i should use my money, but ill keep it as is. I have my reasons to keep it that way and i dont have to explain to anyone my reasons.
Actually quite a few people asked why i keep the STEEM i do in my savings instead of powering up.
Its funny. They say it in such a judgmental way. Judging me for not using my money the way they think i should..

But to me you sound more like an ass kissing yes man here to apply spin and defend a few vote dealers and their goddamn Monkey Posts.

Yes-men? For who? What im doing is completely mental since kissassery is what gets you upvotes here. Not going against ideas of guys like, Traf, Acidyo, Kevin.
Theres a handful of curators and you attacking their proposal is the dumbest thing to do from a monetary perspective.

To say it colorfully: If they fart in your face, you say thank you. Thats what the smart thing to do is.

Not challenge their ideas. So really im more of an "ass" then a "kiss-ass". My Dindex is probably pretty high. ;)

Im just a guy that thinks that we shouldnt be constricting choice and options available, or increase our dependency on just a few people.
That we shouldnt take from everyone to give to just a few.
Id actually rather have 0.5$ payouts for the rest of my time here then beg at the feet of a few curators for a few scraps from their table.

Have a good day. ;)

And what you said about me not caring about content or curation... Thats completely false.

We need to expand the economy and add all kinds of new value propositions. Not constrict it by catering to a few curators.

haha I don't think you need to be brilliant to see that rewarding content indifferent voting behavior (vote selling/farming) 4x more than good curation is a recipe for disaster. It's a surprise we adopted this economic model, and a bigger surprise to be stuck here for over a year.

You're right to be concerned about downvotes. Every one of these measures I've pushed for have trade offs. Ideally we don't want to take more rewards from content creators, we don't want the inequality of any suplinearity, and we don't want the drama, grief and toxicity of downvotes. The idea is to have a minimum combination of these measures that together, is sufficient to close the 4x gap in returns between vote farming and curation.

I'll focus on downvotes. I have a lot of concerns with additional downvote incentives, some of which overlap with yours.

The point you raised about directly using downvotes to benefit oneself is less of a concern if free downvotes are relatively limited. This is because unlike upvotes which can be directed to reward a specific account, downvotes can only be used to deprive an account of potential rewards. So if I have $100 of free daily downvotes, I can't really use them to direct rewards towards me very easily. The most I can do is throw them out indiscriminately on posts I have not voted and thereby indirectly have the posts I have voted to rise ever so slightly in value because I've taken the potential payout of someone else and throw it back into the rewards pool.

Now this doesn't entirely apply if free downvotes have a very high limit. If everyone is given as much free downvotes daily as their daily upvotes (which btw is what most witnesses support but I'm pushing against), then there may be sufficient incentive for larger stakeholders to collude and strategically place their downvotes in a way that significantly pulls rewards platform wide from other posts and pushes them towards posts from which they benefit. Overall this is not an issue with lower limits of free downvotes which I'm espousing.

There are further problems with downvotes. First and foremost, they just suck. Having even minor downvotes thrown at you feels terrible. Not only are they saying they think your content is shit (however right they may be here), they get to remove money that otherwise was directed towards you, making you feel worthless. Of course it gets a lot worse than that, imagine being a relatively small account and having some whale you've randomly ticked off decide to put you in a choke hold for a month. However bad that is, it'll get a lot worse with even with a moderate amount of free downvotes. They greatly contribute to toxicity and escalate negative emotions. I don't think the higher ups really appreciate this as they don't quite use the platform in a way that many of us do, as a social platform.

Compounding this is the fact that unlike upvotes, there are no real checks and balances against free downvotes. Higher curation rewards in upvotes should hopefully become the dominant form of income generation for stakeholders, and thus there's an economic incentive for them to be cast carefully with precision, as your returns are determined by them. There's no similar incentive to keep downvotes precise, proportionate and reasonable. I'm not rewarded more for casting the fairest downvotes on the entire platform. And given the emotional nature of them, they'll be anything but precise, proportionate and reasonable.

For a stakeholder that's using a curation bot or service and making their returns that way, there's little recourse against them if they choose to use downvotes irresponsibly. As they don't post themselves, they're impervious to retaliation and cannot be deterred that way. Remedying an abusive free downvote requires an upvote, which are costly. Free downvotes may serve to keep upvotes in check but the reverse isn't true as there's no such thing as a free upvote.

I honestly have a lot of problems with introducing this change. Nevertheless if it's a moderate amount, I don't see too much direct incentive to use them abusively. There's little to gain directly from abusing them other than if you're a sadist, and I do imagine most of it will be directed with good intentions.

The simple truth is 50% curation just isn't enough to make curation competitive with vote farming so we need downvotes to help, despite all its considerable flaws. Because I strongly believe that however bad they are, the utter failure of a content discovery and rewards platform in which we find ourselves right now is worse. If you have any other ideas with fewer detriments, I'm definitely all ears.

Good to hear from you again my friend

Your actions MUST coincide with my values! If you do not conduct yourself based on my set of values then you are a resources waster and you should be punished..

I didn't say that. You're using blockquotes incorrectly, putting words in my mouth.

...THAT is better then begging.

Who's begging? I'm confused. Is receiving a vote from a curator, begging?

Actually quite a few people asked why i keep the STEEM i do in my savings instead of powering up.
Its funny. They say it in such a judgmental way. Judging me for not using my money the way they think i should..

I have reason to believe the tone of voice you create within your mind when reading words has deceived you.

What I asked was:

You wrote a post, pressed many buttons and paid people 15 STEEM so you could earn .023 STEEM. Why not powerup that STEEM in your wallet, press the vote button once, help someone, and earn more than .023 STEEM?

That's a question. It has a question mark on the end. A step people take before they make conclusions.

Ass kissing doesn't get you upvotes here. Most of us see right through it. Just because you see ass kissers, that doesn't mean they are being rewarded. If you're assuming anyone being rewarded is a beggar and an ass kisser, you've insulted and thrown thousands of people under the bus for no reason at all. Showing your true colors is appreciated though.

We need to expand the economy and add all kinds of new value propositions. Not constrict it by catering to a few curators.

A few curators? Everyone with SP stands a chance of earning more as a curator. Even those with 100 SP. How is that constrictive?

... increase our dependency on just a few people

When everyone delegates their SP to a handful of accounts, you become dependent on purchasing votes from a few people. They earn 90% of the reward pool, content creators will be lucky to see 10%.

When everyone sees there's more money in curating, they take their delegations back and now suddenly we have thousands more people with SP they can use to vote on whatever they want.

Like I said, and I mean this in the nicest way possible: I think your head is screwed on backwards.

When you talk, I don't feel confident you know what you're talking about.

You have a good day as well.

Yeah, youre probably right about the blockquotes. Ill change it to italic once im done with this reply... Wasnt implying these are your words, im drawing conclusions i see following and expressing implications of your words, based on what you said.

Who's begging?

This is referring to increased dependency on individual large stake curators that will arise from this change.

I have reason to believe the tone of voice you create within your mind when reading words has deceived you.

Well not really. People seem to be hung on how and in what way someone uses their assets here. What your intention was i cant say. Nor did i imply anything. What i can point out is what i have noticed others do/say when raising the same point of what i, or anyone else does with their wallet. It doesnt mean you are the same in any regard, but i did notice that whenever someone did make a reference to the couple STEEM i have in my savings it would be in this manner as stated above just in case you were doing the same thing.

Ass kissing doesn't get you upvotes here. Most of us see right through it. Just because you see ass kissers, that doesn't mean they are being rewarded. If you're assuming anyone being reward is a beggar and an ass kisser, you've insulted and thrown thousands of people under the bus for no reason at all. Showing your true colors is appreciated though.

Haha. This is why i love discussing with you so much.

Assume you know my mind and Strawman my arguments.
Add "if" as a cop out
Still drive the point regardless of the "if", that im an asshole insulting everyone by adding "Showing true colors".

I love it! :D

But no, seriously.. The kiss-assing isnt the only thing that drives upvotes. What drives it is "same class" placement, altruism, virtue signaling, bot payments, contributions, quality, hundreds of other things good or bad, and of course kiss-assery. My point is that kiss-assery would be incentivized more with this proposal.
And on the point of you guys smelling it a mile away... Thats just not true.
A smart kiss-ass knows how to do it without being noticed. And you cant notice it. Is the person just a kind, loving and sugary individual or is he faking it because of the incentive to do so?
You cant tell. Fakeness and kiss assery is actually beneficial to this platform. Reduces drama and conflicts..
Still... It drains integrity from the community.

A few curators? Everyone with SP stands a chance of earning more as a curator. Even those with 100 SP. How is that constrictive?

.... and less as a _________. The effects of that i covered bunch of times in the comments from many angles.

When you talk, I don't feel confident you know what you're talking about.

Well i share the same opinion of your comments and arguments (only natural, or we wouldnt be on drastically opposing sides of the argument, would we?) even though i would never make that statement as bluntly as you since i find to be made in bad taste and unnecessary..
Though, I do feel confident that you might have a very narrow view of what STEEM is and what its future is/could be.
I see your point of view being simply that of a blogger. Completely focused on content placement.

But seriously though, its been fun. Your zest for discussion, however wrong i consider you to be, is a breath of fresh air on a platform where attention is inherently to DPOS, in many cases, not all, dependent on stake...
Ill go fix the blockquoute now. ;)

hey traffy good to see you posting again

so what's the conclusion? is making 10 post a day getting boring or u just missing the $8 price tag?

honestly you proved your point, you have made more self upvoting about 200k Steem in about the same time as posting when you made 100K (and honestly probably the same effort ~ accumulatively)

from what I can see the separate 10% flag pool isn't going to gain much momentum, but then again, many who has been here a long time have seen flag wars or skirmishes reward ego bruising, so i can see the fear factor, not sure about @ned wanting a 100% separate flag reward pool, but yeah I can see that a new culture will come soon if that happens, we can even flag folks for powering down, flag for delegating to bots, flag for not wiping up after shitting in the streets, the flag options are endless

i don't see the harm of doing 50/50....since we have done that before, but in the meantime, big self upvoters like yourself will still benefit the most with alts (and i'm not saying you don't deserve upvoting your 10 post, but as you say, it's at the sinking ship expense that's distributed to all aka all Steem holders get taxed even at 50/50 [unless you start getting flagged....my thoery you will stop at 20% loss easy].......still if you got 200% return more aka 200K Steem vs 100K from exponential rewards i would say that return is still pretty good at Steem at $0.80....considering you're deep in the black)....so honestly i don't see how you would get discouraged to stop self-upvoting

that super linear 1.2-1.3 thingo might not deter bot usage....infact it might pump it higher

so how about this, consider these economic ideas and do a part2 post:

reduce delegated voting power to 80%....see what happens
i'm not in the chat with the other big whales and steemit inc like you are, so why not propose increase curation by 5% every minor hf so it goes from 25% to 50% over say 6-12 months....and we all see what happens?
try limiting your selfupvoting 80% (and see if encouragement works to help retention and user base growth).....aka vote 20% away to worthy content creations to increase and buff up the fundemental value of Steem even in this down market, ...i know you probably already hate (or have negative feelings about) @comedyopenmic and have not supported since your tiff with @idikuci which striked a nerve with you since day 1 of his complain....but i never flagged you, infact i upvoted you 100% multiple times when i was still powered up at 25K during those times......so follow your emotions, don't upvote whatever I say, heck don't make any extra effort .... hell you can set 20% to follow @curie and just cut your post and comment upvote to equivalent 8 a day

i have just read an interesting paper....that proposes btc will rise again to 19-20K only after the next stock market crash..upto 1-2 years in the future ....the theory of a long winter for crypto easily mean we eventually see a $.50 Steem....hell maybe even an extreme dip back to your avg purchase price of$ 0.20 - .30 (that would really be worst case scenario)

look with 6 new social media crypto on EOS and a dozen others on other crypto....yes most running AND working, in 1+ years, i doubt Steem will still have the incredible lead it had in 2017 when you bought Steem, and I'm almost 90% certain Stem will no longer have a lead in 2 years time

btw. the long winter theory is not w/o basis.....when the dotcom crashed...as you know being a finance guy yourself, it took 3+ years of a down market from 2000 to 2003 before it started rising again (and slowly rising this time).....and even then , it took over another decade to get near that peak again, history does not repeat but it does rhyme......if 3 years in winter is even 1 year for crypto...then a decade back to peak is another 3 years....but with 1 difference >80% of all the stocks back at 2nd peak were not the same 100 top .com stock in 1999.

yup....good to see you posting again, hope i'm wrong and you become a multi-millionaire again

personally what i hear you are saying is this , if 50% curation (linear or slightly super-linear) and 10% or even 100% flag does not work...it only means 1 thing DPOS - delegated proof of stake does not work, the rich getting richer model will not be the boon of crypto mass adoption on social media

You are definitely right. I would think it is quite simple:

Rewarding a behavior makes that behavior more likely.
The current system seems to reward behavior that is detrimental to the long term growth and health of the platform.
Not making a change is insane.

And yet, people still don't get that "The roof is on fire" and you want to put it out not just to benefit you, but in order to prevent the whole freaking place from burning down (although to be fair, not being on fire would also benefit you personally as I don't think you want to be on fire.)

Here comes the but (Relax. It is a "but" with only one "t").

First, I think you may underestimate the sadist presence and their influence. This is the freaking internet where it has become a “thing” to log in with the sole intention of ruining some stranger’s day.

We need to make it harder for these asshats, not easier.

Second, I am about to say the most taboo thing you can possibly say on this platform. In order to save some people some time, before I make this terribly controversial and insane point, I would like to ask one question.

Is the goal to make a profit (hopefully while consuming and/or producing engaging content) or is it to be a bastion of decentralized unlimited free expression?

If it is the latter, I respect your principles but don’t bother reading the rest of this comment. It derives from he premise that in thousands of years of human history, both goals have never been met at the same time.

Steem the coin is decentralized. I thought steemit.com the social media site was a business. It happens to be a business where anyone has the unlimited freedom to post anything they choose and it will be preserved on the blockchain forever… but it is a business nonetheless.

To me it seems like steemit.com is lot like an open mic at a local bar. Bands, poets and comedians (content producers) are able to take their spot on stage in an attempt to please the crowd.

But every crowded, popular bar has something in common… they have freaking bouncers! Any bar or club that allows the patrons to be the bouncers will definitely fail.

Some may argue that if a club has bad bouncers who abuse their power it will also ultimately fail. But the answer is not to have no bouncers at all… it is to hire the best freaking bouncers! (Like Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse… which is much different from the porn that ends with “head”).

Yes I know that is “centralized”, but that is what businesses are.

This platform is built on an amazing premise. The fact that producers and consumers can both profit from creating and engaging with quality content should result in a booming business. Unfortunately, there are some behaviors that are holding the business back.

If there are behaviors that are hurting the business, the performers and the patrons, hire some bouncers to stop those behaviors. If the bouncers are ineffective or abuse their power, fire them and hire new ones.

Now if there happens to be technology or code that could 100% objectively take the place of bouncers, I am all for it.

Just don't hire any of these...

https://media.giphy.com/media/N8wR1WZobKXaE/giphy.gif

First of all,
Very interesting topic.
I'm glad that you raised the voice about this topic.

By the way,
I want to share some of my ideas & thoughts about this messed up Steem distribution system nowadays.

1. Check how few accounts are holding majority of Steem & SP

1‰(per-mil, not percent) of accounts holding over 80% of whole Steem & SP.
When it comes to ~1%, then app. 94% of whole Steem&SP. (Surprising? I didn't even say how these Steem were distributed at first.. yet)

At this point,
We should accept the reality - Bigger SP makes bigger SP, and Whales has 94% of Steem&SP, simply.

2. 'Delegation' Thingy appeared.. (feat. Bid-bots)

In my assumption, Whales wanted to save their time and collect more coins Easily & efficiently.
Because it would look pretty ugly if Whales upload shit post everyday & upvote each others 10times +@/Day, right?
Then Delegation system appeared.
And Bid-bot system appeared along together.

By these 2 tools, (Delegation & Bid-bot)
1 - Whales can divide their big chunk of SP into several bid-bot accounts, (so they don't have to do ugly things with their original accounts)
2 - Concentrate minnow's SP into their bid-bot accounts for their bigger profit, (poor minnows would think it's win-win strategy when factually it's merely drinking salt water)
3 - Even Sell their vote to minnows for Paid upvoting.
Eg) Some poor minnow who paid 15Steem for 15.0xxSteem might think that it's a good business for him/her, but that is just a hepling bid-bot owner's disguised self voting.

3. Disguised self voting?

Yes. Because by selling vote & receiving same(or more) value of Steem or SBD from minnow - making this scheme looks 'justified' and 'fair' when it's totally Not.

4. Bid-bot is Built-up, Macro program.

Even if someone is going to pay you $10,000 for Shitting on the Street or Public, you can not Shit 24/7.
But Bid-bots Can. This is the difference.

5. So what is the Point?

My point is..
By just 'changing reward ratio for curator' wouldn't be too helpful to fix this serious problem.

Steemit needs Radical Change, not a trick eye.
(You don't use psuedo for cancer, do you?)

-> Kill the bid-bots.

That will be when we can start again.
It's already pretty much 'end-game' phase (since Steem inflation is below 9.5%/year) now, BUT it might giving minnows little more Hope.

Imagine all these whale bid-bots Stop exploiting reward pool!

1 - Finally we will feel some Trickle-down effect,
2 - Can think about Fair distribution by creating & curating quality contents
3 - No more freakin Monkey Post kind of posts spamming all over the trending section. (Newbies feel really hopeless when this happens - Monkey Post getting $$$)

Time is pretty late here and I have to wake up in 3hrs for work.
I wrote this comment just to share my thoughts because it might be helpful to make Steemit change into a better & fair platform for everyone. :)

P.S - I don't mind Whales getting rich.
Just saying that bid-bot is quite tricky & automated Steem&SBD juicer for greedy whales. And it won't be helpful for Steemit platform even in the future.

P.S2 - Dear Planktons, Minnows, Dolphines - Hodl your Steem Hard!! (I am also an Steem Hodler)
HODL will WIN (unless it's EMC2 or Bitconeeeeeeee) ;)

Just my 2 satoshis..✌

Buenas estoy totalmente de acuerdo con el compañero , lo que mejor se puede hacer es tratar de generar mejor contendió para que la gente que usas la venta de votos y todas esas cosas o solo por alargar algo de popularidad no están haciendo lo que realmente es el propósito, aunque soy nuevo en la plataforma creo que el propósito es llegar a todos y cada una de las personas con temas totalmente interesantes y sobre todo de ignorar menos y por cada uno de tus pensamiento conocimiento y cultura que impartas tiene una recompensa lo que pasa es que el dia de hoy estamos en un mundo la cual el egoísmo, la maldad y en solo pensar en nosotros llega a muchas personas (a no ver más allá de si mismos), y que lleva a eso a una mala formación de cultura y a no tratar de mejorar y todo porque por falta de comunicación y eso ha llevado a las guerras solo porque siempre quieren tener el control de las cosas cuando en el otro extremo del mundo la gente muere de hambre, sed, enfermedades y muchas cosas, a que llego con esto diran que esta fuera de lo que habla el compañero pero no es una visión diferente a la elaboración del sistema sino tenemos que hacer campaña o un sistema para terminar con los malos contenidos que las personas puedan hacer aunque siempre existirán pero siempre será una parte a la que no hay que tomarles importancia porque ellos por si solos se iran de la plataforma aunque tengan ingresos porque siempre buscaran la manera fácil de las cosas y eso es lo que siempre los lleva al fracaso, todas esas cosas que hacen para dañar la plataforma por su mala formación. Compartir tus logros y conocimientos aprendidos es la base fundamental de la plataforma que las personas cambien la manera de ver el mundo. Un gusto compartir un poco de este escrito muy buenas noches atentamente @miguelcubas

Good, I totally agree with the partner, what can be done better is to try to generate better content so that the people who use the sale of votes and all those things or just to extend some popularity are not doing what is really the purpose, although I am new on the platform I think the purpose is to reach each and every one of the people with totally interesting topics and above all to ignore less and for each one of your thoughts knowledge and culture that you impart has a reward what happens is that today we are in a world which selfishness, evil and just think of us reaches many people (not to see beyond themselves), and that leads to a bad culture formation and not trying to improve and all because of lack of communication and that has led to wars just because they always want to have control of things when at the other end of the world people die of hunger, thirst, disease and Many things, I come with this will say that this is what the partner speaks but it is not a different vision to the development of the system but we have to campaign or a system to end the bad content that people can do but always they will exist but it will always be a part that should not be taken into account because they will leave the platform alone even if they have income because they will always look for the easy way of things and that is what always leads them to failure, all those things what they do to damage the platform due to its bad training. Sharing your achievements and knowledge is the fundamental basis of the platform for people to change the way they see the world. A pleasure to share a bit of this writing very good evening attentively @miguelcubas

Help Me Fix Steem's Economy!

This show is brought to you by, @comedyopenmic.

I disagree.

if you help us fix the economy

fixing the e c o n o m y

ECONOMY

1. Check how few accounts are holding majority of Steem & SP

2. 'Delegation' Thingy appeared.. (feat. Bid-bots)

3. Disguised self voting?

4. Bid-bot is Built-up, Macro program.

5. So what is the Point?

-> Kill the bid-bots.

Epic LOL

Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!

_{_{_ECONOMY}}