Steem economy tweaks: In- and Dis- centives

In a client meeting today we were talking a little about various things including supply chain crush lading to oppression and poverty, effects of financial hardships of employees on business, bonuses, shareholders, engaging staff and financial literacy. There were a few other things too that escape me but that is enough for this purpose. My client is a bridge of sorts between management and manufacturing staff but is generally 'on the side' of the employees.

One thing that he mentioned was a policy that not everyone qualifies for a bonus and this is something I disagree with him on. He argues that everyone is involved in results which is true but, not everyone provides positive results and there are many doing the bare minimum to scrape through. A bonus is there to reward individuals and groups who go above and beyond and lose their value and power if everyone gets a prize, no matter performance.

This led into some other conversations about engaging employees though and I do think that everyone should get some level of bonus, at least for the companies that can over such. I think that the bonus should very rarely be a monetary bonus, it should be in the form of company ownership. The reason is that owning even a small piece of something does wonders for engagement as long as that piece is not too easy to cashout.

The reason is that if one is given cash, the chances of buying in are much lower as the draw of alternative options are available and it is an active move to invest, but, if given shares for example, it has to be an active move to divest. This distinction is very important as it requires thought and investigation either way. The first asks "why buy this over that?" and the second "Why sell this over that?" and this small change creates a different view of the same problem.

I am pretty sure that once those who have never owned shares before (we estimated 80% of their production) have shares given to them, they will start to investigate the pros and cons of holding or selling rather their previous ideas of buying. Buying for the future is not a natural process for humans who are largely driven by instant gratification. Doing this will also encourage financial literacy that is likely to at least help some percentage improve their future positions. For the company in time, this will give much more engaged and perhaps more financially sound employees so that when they come to work, they are a little less pressured by the debt collectors.

Ok, @krnel was asking me the other day what I would do to incentivize and disincentivize some actions here and I thought I might explore this a little. I read a post by @kevinwong about improving Steem where he quotes @trafalgar, a whale investor. (sorry for all the tags)

"I still believe with the right economic adjustments, we can make desirable behavior provide competitive or even superior returns to the problematic profit maximization behavior we have currently. Something like 50% curation, modest superlinear (which would incidentally solve most of the spam problems we currently have as well) and increased downvote incentives would be a good rough guide." - @trafalgar

Even if we tried this, why not try a few other things which would in my humble opinion, improve the system greatly. I think it would be bloody fantastic if more people powered up instead of down so, why not tweak the wallet a little? These sre just ideas for discussion:

• No powerdowns for 6 months to a year from account creation
  Why should someone be able to come in here, earn, and start extracting value immediately without even exploring the community at all let alone engaging? This would also have effects on the bidbots as most will not return enough SBD to keep recycling their vote as the amount of SBD available will decrease unless they buy more. Sure, after 6 months they will be able to power down and start again but, will they? Perhaps the space in between will nudge some of them to actually give a shit or at least not power it all down as they have seen it as an investment with potential, not an ATM.

• No more direct 50/50 payout
  What if instead of having a 50/50 SBD payout it was a 30/20/50 payout where the 50 is still the SP but the 20 in between is SBD that is converted at current internal market rates into SP? This will mean that the accounts will be forced to power up that 40% of their received SBD. This won't be popular but like EA Sports, 'If it's in the code, it's in the code' This will further reduce the available SBD to send to bidbots and help accounts grow SP something like (my math is shit) x1.4 times the rate of only having SP. This buy-in to the system would definitely make people learn a little more and think a little more.

• Reduce vote value while powering down
  Now, it kind of pisses me off to see people powering down but I do understand that there are many reasons for this but, should they have full system rights when powering down? This I am really unsure about but for the case of discussion, what if a powering down account had their ability to vote reduced (for example to 80%) while they are powering down? Delegated SP can't be powered down so this doesn't affect that but, it will essentially put a little more in the pool for those not powering down. Of course, the powerdown handicap could be even higher.

Any changes to the code are going to affect everyone on the platform and not all are going to have the intended consequences and all are likely to have unintended consequences. Much like the delegation ability and the straight line birthed bidbots. The goal is to at least incentivize people to power up and use it to engage the community rather than a constant state of extraction.

These tweaks might disincentivize short term actors and push them more midrange as what they can extract immediately through liquids is 40% less. They will still however benefit from increases or be hurt by decreases in the future. At first, these changes would hurt some people's immediate lives but like has been said many, many time before, Steem is not a reliable income to live off as changes can come at any time.

If these are combined with a few other factors for example, the suggestions from @trafalgar, and perhaps paying curation in SBD/SP not just SP, it would lower the use of bidbots somewhat or decrease the heights they can reach meaning that they would have to attract more users and spread more to get the same returns for delegators, increase the power held on the platform effectively keeping more coins off the markets and get a lot more people large and small bought into the the system for a longer time. This would mean that they actively have to powerdown which comes with a disincentive of a lower vote during that time.

From a Steem economic view, I am not sure what this will do but, making the decision more heavily weighted on whether to power down rather than up means people will be forced to evaluate the pros and cons and what the options will cost them during that time. I don't really see why anyone who is cashing out continually from the system that supports them should be able to benefit from the people who are continually making the decision to buy in.

These are just a couple ideas to consider.

Now, while the sun is shining I will go and play with my daughter on the lake beach so... Talk amongst yourselves.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]