RE: STEEM's Biggest Villian
There are not enough altruistic capitalists that will keep this strange platform afloat, so by chasing off the capitalists (profiteers or what have you) that we do have invested in the platform will only end up hurting the market value of Steem.
When they are cashing out faster than people can generate value, it's a problem. Profiteers are great when you actually have businesses and an economy.
What capitalistic thing has these profiteers done besides cashing out faster than people wanting to buy?
Did most of them run businesses? If you call a bot a business I guess. Did they offer products? Not really. They are just glorified "mining rigs". Steem Monsters is probably the only legitimate business you have on the chain. What else is there to invest on this platform? Nothing.
When the purpose of having stake is "be your own mining rig", that shows how little this platform offers. Steem is just that, "poor man's mining rig". No fancy tech or knowledge needed. Just have some stake and click buttons.
I see Steem as the foremost product to consider. A stakeholder secures the value of Steem in the marketplace. This is because, when stakeholders dump to market, it causes downward pressure on the prices. However magnificent or minuscule the selling, it causes the market to respond in kind. So when someone like Marky says a massive downvote on a whale is like a mini upvote for everyone else, what I think he does not consider is when he drives this money away from the platform the market will respond in kind by downgrading the value of steem. There are not that many altruistic capitalists in this world, let alone ones you can sell on blockchain social media. So when profiteers are part of a select few who prop up the main product, can beggars be choosers. Or should we respect their stake and appreciate what they do for the value of the token?
This is factually correct, and you do not address that fact. You bring up another aspect of such acts that @markymark did not address instead.
Steem does not need profiteers. It needs investors that seek to build value into the endeavor, and this is done by encouraging creators that market Steem with their posts and comments. Profiteers are poor substitutes for that. In fact, they are not similar at all in their effects, and should be eschewed even absent angel investors. Sucking value out of the platform does not benefit it at all.
Okay, so let us assume that it is correct. Let's assume that a massive downvote on a whale is a dusty upvote for everyone else. We don't know what the size of this dusty upvote is and the people who receive it aren't going to notice because it doesn't register on their account as an action. Even if it did, it would show as less than 0.01.
So, in essence, he's going around and bullying large stakeholders for using their stake on their posts. I'll tell you one thing, one of the few motivating factors causing people to buy a larger stake in Steem is to have a more powerful vote, and this gives them access to distribute more rewards from the pool than if they invest less. In this, the coders convey that because of the amount of steem you hold, your vote is more meritorious than someone else's.
I'm not talking about moral merit either, I'm speaking to fiscal merit. These investors in the blockchain chipped in more for the pie. Ergo, they get more slices. Now that makes sense to me. It is logical, and it is sound. Yet, it is only within the realm of upvotes that this is logical and sound. John and George both invested $5.00 in a twenty-dollar pizza. They can take their slices and give them away, or eat them, and that makes sense. However, when you throw downvotes into the mix, you're saying; Or they can have a pizza fight, ruin each others respective day(s) and make a mess of things.
@valued-customer, I do realize that you're stuck on the notion of morality as it pertains to stake-weighting. It's a fair thing to consider, and to some degree, I see and respect your argument. However, keep in mind, I'm thinking from the perspective that the value of Steem is only possible because of investors who create demand and value when they both buy and hold steem, this is why I believe the coders gave larger holders more access to the pool.
However, if you want to get into the notion of morality; You must realize that all of this bickering is over an inflation pool. If it's not right or moral for the federal reserve to inflate, or create fiat currency, then what are we fighting over? A corrupted pool of wealth of which each newly generated steem further goes to devalue every other steem already in existence.
Is the reward pool the swamp? Are we like congress critters bickering over pork-barrel spending? Can anything be moral in this regard? Can the use of the currency itself be any more moral than using any other fiat in existence? If you have a million bucks in a high yield savings account and collect a generous APY, because that's how the system is set up, is that moral?
What if every other customer at the bank had a balance that doesn't exceed 50k; and then suddenly they were informed of how much your APY is in comparison to theirs? Does that make you the bad guy for doing business with the bank? If you uproot your money and leave after the mobs get their pitchforks and force you out, that'll be fewer loans that that bank can lend to that community.
I very much appreciate your considered and substantive reply. However, you have misapprehended my purpose. Money has no value intrinsically, at all. It only has value in relation to people. People are generally morally motivated, with ubiquitous tendencies to vices, I do admit.
Considering Steem only as a financial mechanism renders it devoid of value. It is the people that use Steem that give it value.
Who cares if they self vote? Stake weighting enables substantial stakeholders to manipulate the rewards pool and take from it for themselves. This does not increase the distribution of Steem and does not put upwards pressure on the price of Steem. The reverse is true, because users that post and see @berniesanders self voting an insulting and inane comment for 30 Steem (Bernie, don't pretend you don't) while they get nothing, or only pennies for an hour or more work go away mad.
That decreases the market for Steem, and puts downwards pressure on the price.
I am not extemporizing morality. I am advocating sound business practices. Chasing away the market is not a sound business practice, and user retention to date reveals that Steem is not executing sound business practices in this regard. [@smooth and I discussed retention. He feels it is 7% or more, and I feel it is 5% or less. Either way, it sucks]
Build up the people using Steem, and you will build value into the price of Steem. HF21 does the opposite, and we are observing the results today. I elsewhere (replying to another comment of yourse) discuss how investment and profiteering differ. The former is a tide that floats all boats by increasing the value of Steem, while the latter only profits the profiteer, while decreasing the value of Steem, decreasing the ROI of the entire community as a result.
As to morality, I account the former good, and the latter evil, but no one cares what I think is right and wrong. The concept of fairness exists, and is not merely a human cultural construct. Octopi, crows, and dogs act way out of proportion when tidbits are not fed fairly to them and their peers. Hell, dogs will fight to the death over scraps - because it involves their social standing.
Steem is primarly a social media platform, and social media has proved to be the most profitable business model on Earth, so the FAANGs demonstrate. Steem, due to the encouragement of profiteering and focus on financial rewards, has failed to benefit from the socia media business model nominally, and here we are.
Build up the users, and you will increase the value of Steem. Put the horse before the cart and we'll get somewhere. It is people that have value, and money is worthless without people to value it.
Let's assume that is correct because it probably is to one degree or another. There is no promise of rewards, and the Steem white paper pokes fun at that suggesting that people will get under-rewarded in comparison to the work they put in because it exploits human psychology in the same way that gambling does. However, wouldn't it also be true that if we had 5 aspiring whales who bought into Steem today at 500k each, just so they could self vote, that that in and of itself would drive the market value of Steem upwards?
I don't think that would much affect Steem price for long. Extant whales would get fiat for their Steem, which they would not reinvest in Steem, but spend on hookers and blow (at least that's my assumption based on my knowledge of extant whales), while the SP of the new whales would not encourage anyone and would have a negative impact on user retention as normies fumed at the shitposts making $200 on trending while they got nothing.
The White Paper assumed that 30% of rewards would inure to those normies, who are presently only getting around 1% of them. Casinos don't long survive and profit if they don't parade some winners from time to time, and 1% is woefully inadequate to lure in gamblers.
I don't think 30% is a joke really. It's far more than most folks get IRL, compared to banksters.
Distributing Steem to ordinary folks and great authors would encourage them to post, comment, and interact, and ordinary folks are innately social - they want to benefit others. It's why upvotes on Fakebook and Reddit exist. Handing out 30% of Steem as rewards to those folks would distribute Steem more widely, and they would gladly upvote their friends and good authors more if they could. They're not spending it on hookers and blow, like whales. Those that do never become of greater import to the Steem society. Some folks need potatoes more than they need bigger upvotes to hand out. I am glad if I can help them with my upvotes, because I want them to have potatoes a lot in that case.
Potato buyers would not have ire at Steem as a result, and would be likely to invest in Steem if they become sufficiently potatoed, and also to recommend it to their friends, putting upwards pressure on the price.
Angry folks that see the $200 shitposts on trending while they are reduced to eating recycled food will never invest in Steem, and never recommend it to their friends, and they will leave, putting downwards pressure on the price.
User retention rates indicate the latter is happening a lot more than the former. That's bad business.
I've concluded that we need to admit to ourselves that the whitepaper got it wrong. We can't get any good measure of a post's value based on the weight applied to a post or the number of votes. This, because the stake-weighting is real, and so are the bot armies and vote trails. That said, first thing needs fixing is the trending page to hide problems like $200 shit posts. Algorithms will do it better than the community can. It's not optimal, but it's the truth. I'm just talking about the way things are presented on trending. The page should show multiple popular tags which include the best of the newest articles in each.
I reckon the White Paper got some stuff wrong, too.
Whose gonna choose the 'best'? I reckon trending will work just fine if we eliminate profiteering, which isn't that hard to do. The Huey Long algorithm will fix it quick. Prolly plenty of other ways to do so too, and if better minds than mine set about figuring them, better proposals than mine will come up.
What did I not address?
So when someone like Marky says a massive downvote on a whale is like a mini upvote for everyone else (what I think he doesn’t consider is when he drives this money away from the platform, or when people sell their steem) the market will respond in kind by giving the value of steem a mini downvote. The #newsteem culture has been live for about 3-4 weeks. So far, the price went down two cents. I’m not saying this is only because of you per se. But are you also taking responsibility for the harm you may cause to Steem’s value in your “virtuous” flagging adventures?
What if the main condenser or exchange conducted anonymous exit interviews asking people why they powered down and sold, maybe we could nail down the retention problems to a handful of reasons? If you learned that your actions are causing people to sell, would you be willing to change your behavior to accommodate disenfranchised stakeholders? When all is said and done; Which is more important? Who rewards go to, or that people are willing to HODL? Is there anything meritorious about being a stakeholder [/FULLSTOP]? Or, does steem only have room for the stakeholders who upvote according to your standards? These are some honest questions rolling around in my head.
You can call me crazy, but I don’t think there are that many people with large quantities of cash willing to invest in exchange for the honor to be a full-time blockchain curator or reward poolice officer. God bless the people who are HODLing and positively curating; these folks are angels. They don’t have to do it, but they choose to of their own free will and accord, that’s what makes what they do special. You seem to want this special attitude to be the prerequisite, and I think this mentality belittles the efforts of those who are already doing the thing.
Besides that, it’s a big ask when the platform needs new investors. It wouldn’t be a bad idea at all to hammer down how you plan on pitching the new money before you drive away all the old money. It was after rumors of mobs and pitchforks that caused STINC to sell to the market, and now you’re just going to double down. Keep in mind that whales like yourself will end up holding the bag, so I hope you know what you are doing.
If the people I flag sell and leave, GOOD.
I flag spammers, plagiarists, scammers, and abusers and in the rare case people who libel me.
I don't go around flagging people for opinions or because I don't like their content, I have far more control with my flags than most people on the platform but I will flag abuse.
The price went down because BTC dropped 20% in a day. All altcoins are bleeding as a result.
I take your point on the BTC plunge, that is likely the reason Steem dropped as much as it did. The notion of abusers is the questionable one. The blockchain affords people special privileges based on their investment in Steem. When you prevent people from exercising SP to their benefit, you give them a reason to dump to the market. The big question is, which is more valuable; Retaining them as stakeholders and allowing them to draw the rewards that the coded rate-limit voting allows for, or send them packing in hopes that someone more virtuous will take their place? I know your answer to this question, and I'm only guessing that it's predicated on the idea that these folks are replaceable. So surely you've found a way to pitch the virtuous capitalist, yes? You can chase away "the profiteers" all day long, but if they're not replaced, the platform loses investors, and as selling happens prices trend down.
What do you think the price of steem would be if we continued to have $200+ shit posts on trending.
See? You make way too much sense. At least you're using your SP to try to build Steem into a better place for people to associate with your flags. Doing that promotes capital gains.
It’s tough to say; Trending is a problem, I think it’s solvable with creative coding. If the size of an investment doesn’t add to the value of the crypto; Then why are larger stakeholders afforded a bigger vote?
Does the math need to change to accommodate thousands of years of human evolution? Or can we drum out self-interest via operant conditioning? I think the most natural systems are those that account for human behavior. If Steem doesn’t take that into account, in the code, then what are the chances it will thrive as opposed to dying on the vine?
If I buy 1k steem and give myself an upvote at 100% how does that make me any more or less moral than a guy who does the same with 3 million steem? Does the amount of stake a person holds have any merit in and of itself? If not, does the rate-limit voting need to be adjusted, perhaps on a sliding scale based on stake weight?
If self-voting is discouraged after a certain threshold, maybe this should be fixed at the level of the code. Why not find a way for the blockchain to police the blockchain? People can respect that and live in harmony with others. Anything has to be better than pitting people against each other and relying upon the frailty of human subjectivity.
And what product is that? You mean the tokens? Like every bloody crypto project? Wow, Steem is so special.
There's no such thing as altruistic capitalists. Everyone is here for their own benefit. Period. Capitalists actually build things for profit. Simply holding tokens is not being a capitalist. Simply stacking coins is not being a capitalist.
Again, what is that product? They are here for themselves, not for whatever altruistic reasons you keep citing, but not providing. Oh? You mean propping up tokens? They bought in once. They started non-stop selling. That's not propping up anything. That's called priming their own pump. Or in crypto terms, priming their own mining rig.
And what type of whales was he speaking? All whales or just some bad ones? Because I don't see him openly tell people to take on @theycallmedan or @acidyo, etc. You know who he's referring to.
Respect what? Your right to be the last bag holder?
I can concede that the initial distribution and reward mechanism favor those unsavory behaviors. The way Steem is set up, it makes no sense to vote for anyone else.
That’s pretty much my point, there are no, or very few altruistic capitalists. The combination of the two words is mostly an oxymoron. So, what reason does any capitalist have to buy into Steem? When you buy Steem and power it up the math dictates the influence your SP has on the reward pool. If people like Haejin are doing something wrong, then maybe the math in the blockchain didn’t adequately account for human nature. Why not consider human nature and the fact that some people will capitalize off of their stake to its maximum potential and then work to get the numbers right? Having the coding accommodate for human nature makes a helluva lot more sense than trying to get people to change their behavior to accommodate some random coders failure to predict the inevitable. People with a low stake upvote themselves at 100% all the time, I do it. So if someone gives up their standard APY to invest in the blockchain in a large quantity, then isn’t their stake in and of itself meritorious enough? At the very least, shouldn’t they too be able to upvote themselves at 100% if they value their posts? If not, please show me how you plan on pitching new capital investments.
Instead of posting nonsense just to vote for themselves, what they need is an option for them to burn VP and receive the equivalent in rewards.
It’ll look less spammy and ridiculous that way. It doesn’t sit well for any content creator or potential investors to see whales posting nonsense just to reward themselves in public.
There are ways to do things without a complete overhaul, but STINC and the witnesses aren’t in a hurry it seems.
Yeah, I suppose if everyone had that option, in theory
it would clean up a lot of the spam. Disingenuous
posts might become a thing of the past.
I think it will help with the perceptions a lot.
People will feel less agitated with bs being upvoted to kingdom come.
I recommend capital gains. That mechanism has caused investment to build businesses since time immemorial.
Hmm.. does that mean that when a whale engages in stake weighting, the net result it is not a capital gain?
Correct. While the whale gains more capital, their peers do not. That gain is not derived from increasing the value of the underlying investment vehicle, although the ROI of investors derived from increase in value of the underlying investment vehicle is proportionate to the capital invested, stake weighted, in other words.
Investment for capital gains has been the primary incentive for literally untold millenia. Profiteering, of course, has been undertaken as well. However there is an intrinsic difference between the two methods: one builds value into the enterprise which increases the value of the investment vehicle, such as stock or tokens, and the other extracts the value of the production before it can inure to the investment vehicle.
Financially manipulating rewards mechanisms via stake weighting on Steem extracts rewards that would otherwise inure to creators and encourage growth of the platform, which would in turn put upwards price pressure on Steem. This is tantamount to selling the forges and presses of a factory. Both methods produce ROI, but profiteering destroys, while investment builds. Both whales gain capital, but profiteers decrease the rewards of business, decreasing the value of the investment vehicle and preventing gains of capital by their peers, and investors increase those rewards, and all their peers holding stake benefit as well as the investment vehicle grows in value, increasing their capital too.
It's not a mystery to me why we are in this strait.
If both gain capital, you might need a different
word than capital gain to distinguish the diff
between profiteering and "ethical gains?"
You know what the funny thing is, outside of the whales who ninja-mined; Most people who bought their whale status bought in as speculators and speculators are profiteers. Their goal isn’t to add value, but to get in and extract value and then bail. But nobody predicted the BTC bubble collapse or understood how it would take all the crypto down with it. So they just stared at the falling prices pot committed certain that it would go up again because Steem is awesome, more specifically it’s awesome at profiteering off the creativity of others. Steem WP Zipf’s law [Page 16 of 32.]
Do note that the values expected in the White Paper are 30 times higher than actual results.
Sadly, language is art, not science or engineering. I tried to address that by noting that stake weighting is relevant to both investment and profiteering. I don't actually consider financial manipulation of rewards speculation, but profiteering. Speculation is just bad investing IMHO. Warren Buffet is not speculating when he buys stake in a company, although the ROI is a result of an increase in the price of the asset. He generally sets out to improve the business to produce that increase in value.
Speculators are folks that just watch Warren Buffet and buy what he buys. They just expect an increase in price without doing anything to improve the business. However, doing so puts upwards pressure on the price, so it's not profiteering.
Sorry if my writing doesn't convey well the differences in methodology and impact the practices under discussion have. I don't know of any better words for the job.