I also like the "flying too close to the sun" analogy. You make a lot of great points here, and I agree with them all. I do think value creation should be the focus AND those with a disproportionate amount of STEEM should individually restrain themselves from extracting too much value. This is the part that causes problems from a mentality standpoint. If the largest whales were to take the lion-share of curation rewards under a new economic system, we'd have the same problem again, just a different flavor. I agree, things can be improved, but there will always be "the problem" of wealth extraction until we think in terms of a collaborative commons and not in terms of a staking coin for maximizing wealth extraction.
Some more thoughts on this (which I think you've already seen): An Argument for Long-Term Rational Self-Interest Versus Short-Term Irrational Value Extraction. When people say no one is taking steps to add value instead of extracting value, I point to my wallet and say, "Really? No one?" I think many are, they just do it quietly. I'm happy with the amount of value provided to me via STEEM, and I don't need to use bidbots or self-voting to extract further value. That said, I also agree more can and should be done to protect the commons and disincentivize others from extracting too much from it.
Thanks for the response! Yup we're converging on something here @lukestokes :).
Now we're seeing value adding services popping up all over Steem. Their existence will likely have a much higher chance of greatly accelerating improvements on the network if those with a disproportionate amount of STEEM find a great reason to use them. The best bet is to encourage that action is the have a result that doesn't lose out in the order of 600-1000% compared to self-voting/vote-trading. 300% may still be too much of a difference to trigger a new behavioural equilibrium, a mere 50-100% difference in results may be possible for the revolution that we need. The problem is that value-adding endeavours are falling back by the order of 600-1000% difference.
I understand that we can promote the culture, but there are others that just want to maximise anyway. The wide gap is causing more and more to join the race, "succumb to the dark side". If the gap is not as wide, maybe it'll be more bearable for most users to do it for the greater good, so to speak. I suspect maybe you aren't "feeling it" because you're a top witness :D it's a different kind of skin-in-the-game..
Check out this video, it's very interesting, showing the difference between aspirations and actions..
Finally, in a voice that might get listened to,...
It's a mistake. The economy has to be designed in such a way that it levels the profitability between vote trading and curation activities, which bridges the gap and has the effect of individuals distributing while at the same time sufficiently accumulating SP.
Or, the community could enforce its own standards.
I think its better that we control ourselves rather than appeal to authority to do it for us.
(If it was up to me the bots would require rewards to be declined.)
The community can't really enforce its own standards given the current economic rules. This is grossly unfair and unsustainable.
For example, during the whale experiment abit and I were using our valuable vote power primarily to downvote non-complying whales, while others including other whales were using their vote power to earn rewards (as long as they stayed below the whale experiment limit). Abit and I were happy to do that for a while in the name of an experiment but would we continue to do it for years? Forever? I think not.
We never asked for one, but I think it is telling that we never received a single donation or even a token of thanks for that experiment.
Everyone wants a better Steem, but few are individually willing to pay for it.
The economic changes are needed to create a fair and sustainable way to accomplish this. Community enforcing its own rules without the right economic structure behind it isn't that.
Yes, i agree, simply downvoting all the time does get old.
I may not have said so at the time, but steemflagrewards has shown that crowd sourcing abuse fighting is going to need to persist.
I think the reason that you didnt get alot of support is because we were too new, too few, and stinc's air of righteousness hadn't as many dents in it.
I bet more than a few troops rally to your side if you did it again.
Not that their collective 21.39stu in votes could do much for you, even after a trippling of vote values, but you'd win the popular vote.
I agree that unless the largest accounts take their thumb off the scales we will be little more than a sycophant boys club.
Have you looked at steemua?
Talk about skinning the newbs to enrich the already rich.
Smdh.
If you did it again, what would you set the limit at given today's price?
steemua? Have not seen.
If you did it again, what would you set the limit at given today's price? Doesn't really apply because the goal was to reduce the extreme superlinear so that smaller accounts have some say rather than literally none at all. With linear we have that already. The problems today are different and more pervasive.
@ steem-ua
'Delegate to us so we can vote more rewards to the top grossers, we might randomly vote you, too!'
I checked out once i found out it is heavily weighted towards how many witnesses follow you.
Just another scheme to enrich the sycophants while remaining subtle enough to scam the newbs, imo.
No doubt about that.
Would a return to the n2 with a soft cap of ~1000mv solve enough problems to justify capping one account investment?
Large investors could always have multiple accounts.
The cap could grow as the middle class expands enough to dilute larger voters, ie, keep the hockey stick on a reasonable curve.
How many >500k usd investors are we actually getting vs how many little investors would we get with the benefits of favoring smaller investments?
Its my assertion that had the experiment continued we would now have many more dolphins with a much larger daily user base.
The mined stake would lose its unnatural effect on who is 'approved' to grow, too.