Hey, everyone.

I wanted to talk about my personal reasons for sometimes flagging content, and connect this to my principles as a Voluntaryist, Austrian economics, and the health and well-being of the Steem community in general.

I do not flag posts often, unless they are clearly spam/junk (usually copy paste comments/vote-begging, or outright silly, baseless junk vitriol, etc), but sometimes I do flag posts or comments for other reasons. The reason I do not flag things often is because I want the community to thrive. More importantly, I want myself to thrive. And I want to be seen as a responsible and valuable member of the community.

The free market shows us that the most effective way to be successful is to dialogue and connect with—and not to attempt to take unilateral, seemingly punitive or aggressive action against—those with whom we disagree.

In real life terms, a talk or attempt at genuine understanding will usually get you much farther than a fist, build your reputation, and thus secure your place in a community or society as someone who is level-headed, understanding, and who makes a best effort to reach peace/achieve understanding via dialogue, before resorting to less diplomatic means.

As a Voluntaryist, the initiation of violence or force is never acceptable simply based on a disagreement alone. It should be pointed out, though, that a “flag” on Steemit is not violent (individual self-ownership/property rights are not violated) but is simply an online statement of market preference (regardless of the subjectively perceived quality, or lack thereof, of said preference by others) made by an individual market actor.

THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES, THOUGH.

If I go around flagging everyone I don’t like or disagree with, soon, more rational individuals in the community will withdraw their trust and market favor from me, resulting in a kind of self-imposed harm. My payouts and rewards will suffer, and, most detrimentally, I will stand to lose some of the highly valued personal relationships, meaningful interactions and networking benefits/synergy I enjoy with other Steemians I highly respect. This is, of course, not good.

Conversely, if one’s market preferences are never clearly made, one cannot be accurately said to even be a part of a given market. So, we find a kind of balancing act. We need to ensure our market preferences are expressed sensibly, logically, and in a fashion that holds the long term consequences/potential benefits (for ourselves and others) in view.

Let’s be honest. This meme/meme concept is fucking awesome. So why did I flag the post?

Example of a recent flag, and my reasoning.

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I recently flagged this post by @adamkokesh.

The fact that I flagged one of Adam’s posts won’t come as a surprise to some of you. I don’t really favor his brand of activism so much these days, and remain opposed to attempting to “change the mafia from the inside” by attempting to use politics to bring about the end of politics. For those unaware of what I am talking about, Adam is running for president in 2020 as a “Voluntaryist.” This is, to me, akin to attempting to “use” the Third Reich to bring about greater rights for Jewish individuals. Who knows, I could be proven wrong. Anyway.

The two reasons I flagged this post (which, actually, is an awesome idea for a meme, in my opinion)

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1. False advertising - The meme, in my opinion, gives false hope to those who have just become disillusioned with the rigged and hopelessly immoral political process, and are finally out, and exploring Voluntaryism. I also think the meme promotes an impossible plan, and helps to secure moentary donations from honest people for something which is little more than a pipe dream. If it were for this reason alone, however, I would not have flagged the post!

2. This post, along with other “one pic” or “one meme” posts of Kokesh’s are serially self-upvoted using delegated Steem at 60 USD a post. Meanwhile, other Steemians are doing really useful things like this are getting buried by self-upvoted pictures of dogs and buses, and Star Wars memes. I don’t think this is good for the platform. This is not the type of Steemit I personally want to see. I don’t feel @adamkokesh truly cares about the community here as much as he views it as a springboard for his political agenda.

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Am I opposed to hugely rewarded memes and pics?

No! Not at all! Usually. Shit, I want to make as much money as I can, and want to see others do the same. What I am opposed to here, and why I expressed my market preference by way of this flag, is serial, remarkably self-upvoted, ”one snap” type content (comments as well, including past flame comments Kokesh self-upvoted from 20 - 100 dollars a comment) using delegated SP for purposes I view to be somewhat dishonest, and harmful to the Steem platform’s long term success in general.

As mentioned above, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened with this account either.

I would not care if someone upvoted their comment for a thousand bucks with delegated SP as long as the content was solid, and they were a stand up individual, truly invested in the community. This time, it is not my opinion that this was the case. It is a habitual, and slightly dishonest use of monetary awards and attention that I feel other Steemians deserve to experience.

All that said, I do not believe in the labor theory of value, or administrative, top-down arbitration or policy change from the platform to address this. This is why I applied my flag. I am not a Communist, or a Socialist, or adherent to any collectivist political ideology. I am an individualist anarchist. This is my market voice. There may be consequences as well from this post, and my flag, from those who disagree. This is the risk of being a free market actor. The other side of the coin of opportunity. We all must consider and weigh our actions before taking action in the beautifully open and virtually boundless range of possibility and peril in the free market setting.

~KafkA

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Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as DTube and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)