Once upon a time there was a strong tree.
This tree was the largest tree in the area.
One day, an acorn asked the tree how it grew so strong.
Well, little one, the tree replied, I was once a little acorn just like yourself!
I didn't fall in exactly the ideal spot, with the richest soil, there were many rocks around and it was a bit sandy, but I made the best of my situation, kept my chin-up, dug down as deep as I could, sprouted in the spring time, that's important, then I diligently soaked up as much water and minerals and sunshine as I could.
I had a few competitors around that time, other acorns had sprouted, and there was a lot of tall grass and weeds, but I just kept a positive attitude and did what came naturally.
The little acorn asked, what happened to the other saplings?
Well, the tree explained, they were all cut down by the farmer.
The little acorn asked, why were they cut down and why did the farmer spare you?
The tree thought for a second and then replied carefully, they were inferior, they weren't true to themselves, the wise farmer knew that I was the best and spared me because only a sapling with my work ethic and authenticity could grow into such a mighty tree.
The farmer even placed this nice picnic table in the shade of my branches to reward me for being superior.
That's amazing! The little acorn exclaimed, I'll follow your advice because I want to be just like you!
A whole year passed and the little acorn grew into a formidable sapling.
And then, in the spring, the farmer came to clear the brush.
The sapling was unceremoniously uprooted and bundled up and carried away with all the overgrown grass and fallen twigs.
With it's last dying breath it asked the strong tree, what did I do wrong?
The tree shrugged, you just didn't have the talent for it kid. You doubted yourself. You didn't suck up enough water and minerals and sunshine. You weren't true to yourself.
It's your own fault.
ZOMBIEBASICTRAINING
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Protesting without dialogue (with the sole intent to silence opposition) is harassment, not free speech.
I'm not a fan of ad hominem attacks, but I'm even less of a fan of censorship and retaliation.
Ad hominem attacks and air-horning your opponent are the tactics of FASCISM (dismantles open dialogue and civil debate).
By voting for my "payout declined" comments and posts, you are supporting the highest-quality-community-approved-content of the top-earners!!!
When you vote for something that's "payout declined" your contribution goes directly into the "reward pool" which gets distributed to all the posts that make more than $20 steem, with the highest percentage of the pool getting distributed to the top-earners who are providing the highest-quality-community-approved-content!!!
So you're not contributing your steem to me, you're contributing your steem to whoever the whales decide "deserves" your steem (but I still get a small rep boost).
Why am I declining rewards?
Imagine a "democratic" system, where you could vote for your elected officials, but your vote only "counted" as much as you "invested" in the election system itself (election tokens)... Now that by itself sounds reasonably "fair".
bUT, now imagine that anyone with a larger "investment" in the election system could ERASE your vote?
Would you continue voting? Or would you just give directly to the candidate of your choosing?
Also, imagine steem without voting. Imagine they just Hard-Forked voting right out of the whole thing altogether.
What's left?
A lot of really awesome stuff, that's what!!
The delegation system is amazing (way better than pa.treon). The steem-token transfer system is amazing (way better than v.enmo or credit-cards or banks). The blogging system is amazing (way better than tw.itter or fa.cebuk). It's all super-awesome!!
Perhaps anarchy already exists and government is merely the highest manifestation of organized crime. – @thoughts-in-time
ZOMBIEBASICTRAINING
+proHUMAN +proFAMILY
Your scathing critique is requested.
If we were to have the reward pool taken away, the thing that could change the world for the better in a real and meaningful way will also have been taken away.
Steem is to be passed on to others who will pass it on.
The best use scenario I see is: Invite philanthropic investors to invest in Steem for the purpose of funding real world community projects with votes.
Any thoughts to share about that idea? What glaring obstacles am I not seeing?
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There are better, more effective, more direct ways to "pass it on" than with upvotes that can be taken away on a whim.
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That is true, however there is none so cost effective than a vote of say $250 ten times per day. About 20 million Steem
With that much power, defense would not be that much of a problem.
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If you give any account 20 million steem-power, it's going to go rogue.
That is the ONLY lesson that the "Lord-of-the-RINGS" story teaches us.
If you think "if only a truly good person had this incredible power, then everything would be fixed", then you don't understand how POWER works.
That's also the entire point of Alan Moore's "The Watchmen". IT IS BETTER FOR HUMANS TO HAVE NO SUPER-POWERS, BECAUSE NO MATTER HOW "GOOD" SOMEONE SEEMS, GIVING THEM THE ABILITY TO BOOST OR BAN WHOMEVER THEY PLEASE ON A WHIM LEADS TO FASCISM.
People seem to forget (or have never been informed) that Joseph Stalin was considered by his peers to be the most reasonable, humble and honest of men, and that's the ONLY reason they granted him and him alone VAST SWEEPING "TEMPORARY" POWER.
George Washington's greatest accomplishment was REFUSING to make himself a de facto KING.
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I am not really into the hero worship thing.
i see it more as developing or amplification of the frequency of collaborative creation.
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Well, @steemyoda controlled a million steem-power (now 760,000) and they just got downvoted into negative territory (-3)...
And apparently now you can be automatically censored (suppressed) if you're on "blacklists" or if you post using a "moderated tag". Steem is starting to look a lot like a private-club with a capricious and tyrannical leadership team who can make-up-the-rules to fit whatever fleeting whim happens to suit their current mood.
Some form of "punishment" is all well and good, but there must be clearly stated REASONS for it, and those REASONS must be logically coherent.
AND there MUST be some ROAD TO REDEMPTION for the "offenders".
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Thought you may enjoy this post.
https://steemit.com/life/@zydane/why-no-one-will-understand-your-dreams-but-you-and-why-this-is-empowering
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Thanks for the link!
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nice story man ! loved it... there was a show on cctv4 about the korean pine tree.... almost the same story... you should search it , amazing... light warfare, nutritionwarfare... chance... good story... good flow...
once upon a time there were a lot of trees in fields, so all farmers lost a little yield but all gained from the tree protection (rains, winds, burning suns.... temperature humidity)...
anyway.
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Nice, I was not aware of that!
And of course, there's always this gem, click to watch 5 minutes,
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I don't know how to thank you ! I will add you to my steemauto vote list. stay strong, sunlight for vitamin d, fruit, moderate sport, be safe and wise.
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I had to laugh despite myself. That is so true to life, no punches pulled. Much respect given for seeing what is and acknowledging it.
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The seed for this story was planted in my head a few months back when I was reading the "all-trending" page to see what all the hullabaloo was about. One of the first "high-quality-original-content-posts" I ran across was a long rant about how this blogger started from scratch, like 5 years ago, and persevered their way to the top of the "all-trending" page without a lick of help or outside investment. Making it into the elite club of the top-earners proved their talent and grit and dedication to being themselves. And of course, they boldly declared, "if I can do it, then anybody can".
And I thought to myself, this self-aggrandizing, vapid rant is what passes for "high-quality-original-content" worthy of the sacred top-trending page?
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The only person I knew who did this (although I can't see him saying something along those lines so probably not the same person) was Krnel. He got targeted really hard for awhile (before my time here) for being so successful, and actually left the platform for awhile because of it.
I have never thought the trending or hot page was worthy of my time after looking at it my first couple weeks here. Just wasn't interested in the topics and fakeness of it.
I wanted to mention, I have begun powering down in due to the acquisition by Tron. I want to be prepared to liquidate if/when or before he begins forcing a token swap as I want nothing to do with a new chain. Because of this, you may wish to allocate the remaining delegation elsewhere where it may be more effective. I appreciate your kind thoughts of me for making the gesture.
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lol
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Ok, thanks for the notification.
If you abandon ship, let me know, but as long as you're posting and voting and stuff, I'll keep it assigned to you.
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Wanted to let you know I am abandoning ship. I am mostly going to be on Hive now and don't really have time for two blogging sites. Might pop in occasionally to vote for whomever is left here, but will be sporadic. Not sure if you will be doing Hive, but will keep watch for you there if you decide to give it a go.
If not, wanted to thank you for your gesture of delegation. And moreso for your thought provoking posts. You bring gifts of light with you, in the way you don't present your knowledge in an attacking way, which allows for the recipient to dwell (if they are of a mind too) on what you present, instead of getting defensive and doubling down on their position without spending energy on your assertions. I understand people who so attack with their knowledge, and it does present a good study of human nature (although I learned long ago not to identify most of my beliefs as myself as it impedes growth). Both ways teach those who understand what they are seeing, but yours is more conducive for the masses if the desire is for them to bind new information.
Regards to you and yours.
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Thanks for the notice and the encouragement. Keep thinking practical thoughts! I may join you on the hive at some point if this place becomes a ghost town.
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haha very cool. I love it
I may be being a little thick/stupid or some such thing, however, would it be an imposition if I were to request an explanation of the msg you are sending regarding you recent decision to decline payouts on your posts and comments?
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I relish any questions you might have.
By voting for my "payout declined" comments and posts, you are supporting the highest-quality-community-approved-content of the top-earners!!!
When you vote for something that's "payout declined" your contribution goes directly into the "reward pool" which gets distributed to all the posts that make more than $20 steem, with the highest percentage of the pool getting distributed to the top-earners who are providing the highest-quality-community-approved-content!!!
So you're not contributing your steem to me, you're contributing your steem to whoever the whales decide "deserves" your steem (but I still get a small rep boost).
Why am I declining rewards?
Imagine a "democratic" system, where you could vote for your elected officials, but your vote only "counted" as much as you "invested" in the election system itself (election tokens)... Now that by itself sounds reasonably "fair".
bUT, now imagine that anyone with a larger "investment" in the election system could ERASE your vote?
Would you continue voting? Or would you just give directly to the candidate of your choosing?
Also, imagine steem without voting. Imagine they just Hard-Forked voting right out of the whole thing altogether.
What's left?
A lot of really awesome stuff, that's what!!
The delegation system is amazing (way better than pa.treon). The steem-token transfer system is amazing (way better than v.enmo or credit-cards or banks). The blogging system is amazing (way better than tw.itter or fa.cebuk). It's all super-awesome!!
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I could see it if a number of the top earners were actually writing stuff worthy of consideration to have your rewards randomly thrown and distributed into the pool at them but there are many in that group who aren't deserving of any more reward for the meaningless crap they write then they are already getting. It makes no logical sense at all.
No, the little guy was true to himself, he was true to the others it's just as with anything in life there's always that one that makes life harder on others and takes more than he should for his own selfish advantage.
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Well stated.
Part of what I'm trying to illustrate is the insanity of books and news stories about "how I got rich".
The idiots don't know why they got rich and naturally assume it's because they're superior in some way.
What worked for J.D. Rockefeller or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates years and years ago, WON'T WORK FOR YOU NOW. Stop buying their books!!
They've specifically changed the laws to PREVENT anyone from using the same tactics that they used back then.
There are a zillion and one contemporaries of J.D. Rockefeller who were just as "smart" or "smarter" who were "100% true to themselves" and worked hard all day every day and they didn't "make it to the top".
What we're dealing with is SAMPLE-BIAS, more specifically SURVIVOR-BIAS.
...and the fundamental-attribution-error.
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It makes perfect sense.
If you don't vote at all, THEY still get your share of the reward-pool.
I'm opting-out of the reward-pool-game specifically because of all the unpaid-voluntary-vigilante-"protectors" of the magical-"community"-reward-pool.
And it works.
I haven't seen cheetahbot anywhere!!
The voting system is fundamentally broken, it's only good for rep.
If you want to support what you consider "high-quality-content", I would ask you to consider delegating (arbitrary-loan, ARLO) to those you like, BECAUSE that can't be "canceled" by our fearless army of intrepid unpaid-voluntary-vigilante-"protectors" of the magical-"community"-reward-pool.
The delegation system (arbitrary-loan, ARLO) is similar to pa.treon, but vastly superior because there is no centralized control, and you don't have to divulge any personal or credit-card information to anyone, AND you can easily cancel at any time to get all of your funds back, so there's ZERO-RISK.
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If you're curious about anything more specific, I'm all ears.
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Another high-quality-high-effort-single-image-with-no-attribution-link-and-minimal-text - https://steemit.com/steemisnottron/@themarkymark/swiped-left
IMAGE SOURCE
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Because it is broken. The only vid I have ever seen of Dan and Ned explaining the chain had a part in where they say "the community" as individuals will decide what is worthy of more money. I did not watch further since I do not see why it is being sold as something new when it just mimicks the shitshow that is traditional social media. Has a model been developed that allows for subjectivity such rewarding content and governing can be coerced into something that is objectively fair and logical... I don't know but I do know that the focus right now needs to be governance that will trickle into how we then decide to manage the reward system. I do think admitting that stake is only one and not even the biggest factor in many parameters to build something that is dynamic and a chain that can protect itself from the users.
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Marky proposed a tipping system that would mirror the voting system (with a slider from 0.001 to 1 steem).
This would be a direct wallet-to-wallet transfer that could not be "downvoted" or otherwise interfered with and would not be time limited to 7 days.
It would basically be what I thought the voting system was in the first place (and what most newbz think it is).
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Yeah tipping is the solution we use on whaleshares.
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Whaleshares has a branding problem and a userbase problem, and probably some other structural problems (removing downvoting is not their critical systemic flaw).
Marky's blacklists are about to make downvoting 100% redundant anyway (why waste your downvotes on invisible posts??).
I've personally opted-out of the "voting-system" and I'm very impressed with the results so-far.
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true, many issues but also the only example of a tipping system I think other than BAT , not sure how publish0x handles it but wls is a steem fork so it shares the same dna.
I don't see the viability of delegating people sp for every interaction especially for small accounts the growth is not ... mmm words... tangible? There is a psychological factor to having votes etc which is required. Hence although wls has other flaws and I can't be bothered with too much the biggest with the tipping is that people can feel powerless when they have no funds to tip hence if something maybe does get implement a more superficial method to accompany it might help, something that amplifies even the smallest rewards.
Seeing as steem has grown beyond content and we won't get smt in the next year then sure just rip it all out, who knows aim then to avoid thinking that people or more so stake can dictate things. Sorry rushing a bit cause at work but also to just get it out of my head.
pros and cons to it all, I wonder what people see as the end goal.
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Steem-delegation is very similar to pa.treon and that seems to be extremely popular.
Perhaps there could be three "vote" buttons at the bottom of each post, "vote", "tip", "delegate".
It's not really adding any "new features" it would just make the existing features more accessible and visible.
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Apparently @joe.public replied and there's not even a "click to show hidden comments" button to indicate their attempt to participate in the conversation.
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Tag @baah
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They came for the name-callers and I said nothing, because I'm not a name-caller.
They came for the Christians and I said nothing, because I'm not a Christian.
They came for the conspiracy theorists and I said nothing, because I'm not insane.
Then they came for the independently minded skeptics, and those types never stand up for anyone but themselves, so they were easy-pickins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_
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"It's a big club and you ain't in it".
Click to watch 3 minutes,
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"and nobody seems to notice and no one seems to care"
Such a sad but true observation.
Will people ever wake up?
And, we see it everywhere, everywhere, even here on Steem.
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Congratulations @logiczombie! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPVote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!
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Good times,
IMAGE SOURCE
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Click to watch 8 minutes,
The Primary Moral AXIOMS of @lukestrokes,
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@lukestrokes, how would you apply this "Philosophy of Liberty" model to the steem blockchain?
You own your life (presence).
You own your liberty (actions).
You own your property (blog).
YOu have the right to protect your own life, liberty, and property (blog) from the forceful aggression (downvoting, wholesale suppression and harassment and vandalism) of others.
You have no right to designate some person (or organization) to initiate force on your behalf (steemcleaners).
You have the right to [voluntarily] seek leaders for yourself, but you have no right to impose rulers onto others.
Amazing video by the way, thanks for the share.
I'm guessing yo.utubez model seems fair, you can mute comments, screen comments, disable comments, pin comments (on your own blog only) and perhaps you could block specific users from commenting or voting on your blog (essentially mute yourself to specific accounts).
As it stands right now, based on a "libertarian" model, we have no autonomy over our own blogs (homestead, real-estate).
I should be able to "put up a fence" (mute myself to strangers, make my blog "friends only") if I'm so inclined.
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This new contest at #freespeech looks interesting.
https://steemit.com/hive-128776/@bluabaleno/quotable-free-speech
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