Water In A Bucket

Crabs In A Bucket

Who follows me, knows how much I like the 'Crabs In A Bucket' analogy from the original Steem whitepaper. It expresses a concept in a way that a 5 year old could understand it.

image created with Dall-E

Hole In A Bucket (ELI5)

A man lives in the desert. He has succesfully drilled a borehole and can extract enough water to survive. A wanderer approaches.

"Water! Water, please!"

The man shares some of his water and the wanderer fills up his bucket. The bucket has a hole in it and the wanderer can only drink a few sips, before the bucket is empty again.

"Water! Water!", the wanderer screams in panic.

The man tries to explain to the wanderer, that he needs to fix his bucket first.
The wanderer keeps asking for water, though.
After trying to fill up the bucket a few more times, and more water seeping into the desert sand, the man is afraid, that his borehole will run dry and stops filling the bucket.

"I am happy to give you water, but your bucket is leaking. If you suck the borehole dry, we might both die from thirst", the man explains.

"Water! More water!", the wanderer screams. "Please help me!"

Eventually, the man gives up. He can not help a man, that is unwilling to fix his bucket and tells the wanderer to fuck off.

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Buckets Of Hive

Many authors have approached me to help them. This happens a lot.
I have tried helping many people on Hive.
I give them votes, get my friends to vote for their content, I have even just send HBD to some people.

Those that stay on the platform (most just disappear and stop posting) come back with an empty wallet and ask for help again.
I try to help them again, but I am focused on fixing their fucking 'bucket' or better: Teach them how to 'drill boreholes', so they can sustain themselves, or even better: Set them up, so they can help others.

Rarely does this work.
The majority just can't fix their own buckets.
It's so pointless.

Hole In Hive

The same analogy also applies for Hive as a whole.
There is a limited supply of new Hive. Most trickles down from the rewards pools.
Then there are authors, who only ever cash out.
They want more rewards, more money, but never set themselves up in a sustainable way.

These people are like holes in Hive and constantly throw their rewards on the markets.
This creates more supply on the exchanges and puts pressure on the price.
That's why Hive is so cheap.

Most of the people I follow are a net drain on the system.
They leech and never bother giving anything back.
It's so frustrating.

While being amazingly smart at gaining more rewards, they act like they don't understand what at least keeping some HP powered up could do for the system as a whole.

They want others to read their content, but have no time reading and curating the content of others.
I am at a point, where I just want to tell them to get fucked.

Some even have the audacity to only vote for people larger than themselves, making the rich even richer, but never even consider voting for someone smaller than themselves.

It makes me sick.

TL;DR (and for future reference):

I am happy to help you fix your shit, but stop asking for money.
I am over it.