Your Tragedy of the Commons example is PERFECT. It's great to see a REAL Steemit leader rise up to raise more attention to this.

I've been on Steemit for 7 months now and have seen so much change. There's so much profiteering now and it's ruining my experience/outlook.

Being realistic and honest, I've been so disappointed with how larger Steem Power holders have been centralizing their power in the form of delegation to upvote bots (or making their own). It feels like the ecosystem is forming a bunch of conglomerate banks. Isn't this what crypto is supposed to NOT be about?

These bots prey on minnows, who feel pressured to pay to compete, and ruin the natural balance I feel Steem Power was intended to have. It's stealing from the poor, for something they should get naturally if stakeholders cared to read material and curate manually more often. So many people cheerlead these initiatives under the guise that they're helping minnows, but they're killing the "Commons" in my view.

Steem Power is being passively shelved for daily stake payouts, yet these people continue to blog (take take take) without the power or priority/interest to reward people and help the ecosystem thrive. It really screams wrong-direction to me and has repeatedly talked me out of making investments in the platform as it seems to be getting worse. This is a great concern of mine for retention and adoption. If this trend doesn't reverse, then we're at risk of being a lame duck platform with no "users" to me and "customers" to them.

I've recently learned that JerryB. literally can't upvote manually per the terms/conditions to his stakeholders investing in his bot. Thats a tragedy to me, sets the wrong precedent, and frustrates me to no end as they continue to act as an evangelist. It's all business...

I'm glad you have the balls to speak up about the reality here. I feel that so many people are focused on XYZ, but we haven't even mastered the ABC's.

Hopefully people will adjust their priorities to GIVE instead of receive. That'll fix so much in the long game, and make everyone more money/create more well-being...