61.96

That is the average number of votes I have cast everyday since I started 485 days ago on STEEM. 30054. Close to 100% of these are manually cast, most of the time I have stayed above 80% Voting Power to maximize strength and, although I self-vote, around ~94% of the votes I cast are on other people. What does it matter?

It doesn't, so, why help a community that doesn't really want to be helped?

Over my time here I have been trying to find ways to improve the system through convincing people to take a community perspective for the long-term improvement of all as well as ideas to tweak the code to help that goal eventuate but, people are people and I have to accept that. I am a person too.

So, similarly to what @liberosist suggested here why not simplify the Steem ecosystem as much as possible and let the markets decide what the values are and who will benefit from them.

For example, I have been suggesting increasing the lock-in time for SP but, let's remove it altogether (with a few caveats) and allow people to sell as they see fit, let them take advantage of the market ups and downs. This will of course make it like any other coin out there but, it will mean that those who so value in holding doing just that and those that don't, selling cheaply. In the short-term, price will likely fall but, long-term it should mean that there will be an accumulation process by those who see the value. Distribution will likely increase wider but, there will be those that have, and those who don't.

@liberosist suggested getting rid of the access to the pool altogether and instead use SMTs to access it. He knows a lot more about what this may do than me but, I don't really see a problem with this and it means that Steemit Inc could create the first SMT and fundamentally change the way it is distributed. Other SMTs can then create their own versions and the market will decide which it wants to use and to what level. Perhaps some will keep stake weighted voting, perhaps not.

I don't know what removing stake-based voting will mean for anyone who has been accumulating Steem up until this point but perhaps at least it will stop the nonsense of some of the circlejerks and I think should take away the stranglehold the bidbots have since they make up so few of the actual voters but hold so much control over the pool.

Again, I don't know (like zero) what effect any of these suggestions people have will have on the reward pool or the community but, as long as Steem goes up in value eventually, I am golden since I am a holder already. Perhaps opening it up to full market pressures will allow the EOS shills to sell off immediately and crash the price so I can pick more up rather than them slowly draining the reward pool with their nonsense.

What I suspect will happen though is that if the market decides that Steem has utility and value, there will likely be a relatively small number of holders who will be fabulously wealthy and everyone else at various levels all the way down to people fighting over 0.2 of a Steem on the marketplace. Again, that is okay, it is the way a free market works and this is the thing about it.

A community is not a free market system because the community will spend more effort looking after some than others, it is a biased system and at Steem, the bias is not based on anything more significant than we all happen to be using the same platform. All of our motivations and ideas about what is best for us doesn't mean it is best for the community.

So, instead of beating heads against walls trying to build a community that maximizes the community value itself, why not just remove the idea of community itself and let communities form organically away from Steem. This will likely be largely in circlejerks too but, the circles might actually be made of people who care about each other's well-being as well as about their personal futures.

Perhaps the community builders such as who I thought I was have got it all wrong and the best thing to do is to break all ties and then see what groups clump together to form their own things, SMTs or whatever to do what is best for themselves.

I don't know if it will lead to an increase in eventual price or a decrease never to recover but there really is no point trying to help people grow for the future when most people aren't willing to help themselves. The current community is made up of a small number of people pulling an absolute mass and no matte the words that people speak about community and future, the overwhelming observed result calls bullshit on it as we can see from those who are holders and those who are extractors.

Let's do something that is tried and tested instead and allow the markets decide who will manoeuvre and fight their way into a position of plenty and who will be crushed in the process. If we keep fucking around for too long however, the mass of money pouring into the market from the most successful and tightest knit community ever to have existed (banks) will be missed by Steem and everything up until this point will be for nought anyway.

Whatever it is, I don't know but this isn't working currently so, change something.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]