At first I did follow the logic behind what was written in the Steem Whitepaper. But that is allready outdated quite a bit. And now I've been active here for about three months, I start to see severe flaws in the way it is set up. Many frustration coming from new accounts, ranting about, being downvoted hard in effect becoming useless. Mind you, I did read those 'hidden' posts of the accounts that got flagged down to pieces. And allthough I disapprove of cursing and absolutely of threatning, I can actually understand the reason that this is happening. So no hurray for the 100K account, from me, because there is something that needs fixing, fast.
In the Steem whitepaper there was an analogue made between the way Steem works and a stockholder corporation. There is the first hickup, to my conclussion. It is not the same, but the effects should be about the same? Now, please keep an open mind, my goal is to improve Steem(It) for every account. It is a census suffrage system, in effect, whereby the stockholders with most VESTs (known as Steem Power at SteemIt dot com) at stake also have the most curation power. That is a bit weird, to say the least. Because why would a large stakeholder get on the 'workfloor' and start to interfere with the production? Even deciding who gets payed for their efforts and who won't get a thing?
Currently Steem(It) is an oligarchy and that is becoming a huge challenge
As you may have noticed I am not comparing owners of accounts with animals from the sea. Also in this post I will only talk about large VEST holders and so forth. Back to the creation of the Steem Oligarchy, meaning a small group of accounts rule over every aspect of the Steem realm. These are the accounts that own the biggest combined value in Steem VESTs, also known as Steem Power. (Yes, I know there is a calculation, it is not 1 VEST on 1 STEEM POWER...) What this means in the SteemIt practise is that a small group of accounts can make, break, divide and conquer. And I'm sorry that I have to state that the accounts that noticed this as being an unfair competition, seem to be right. Because it is biased towards big Steem Power owners...
How did I miss out on this in the first place, because I read the Steem WhitePaper a couple of times. And I got annoyed by people whom I thought just wanted to give Steem a bad name. But I still do not want to say they are right, because Steem(It) is still in Beta and can not yet function substantive on the long term. Also the price of Steem still could go down to about 18 cents. Do the big Steem VEST stake owners want this to happen? I do wonder, because it does not even matter if there are 200K accounts, or 1 million, when nobody wants to create content anymore... Content is what will create attention and traffic, that is what makes inVESTing into Steem Power interesting. Also, more accounts will create a lower share in the 90% VESTs that gets distributed every day, just for the Steem Power stockholders.
Now why is the Steem olicharchy bad for the community
Well, many account holders seem to prefer an anarchistic inspired way of life. Just meaning, no rulers, the developers who created SteemIt do claim to be so. And yet, they seem to have a difficult time translating this into the voting system. While it actually seems very simple. Now the actuall power for distribution lies in the hands of just a few accounts. That is far from idealistic. And I have noticed that the Steem Oligarchy actually did roast accounts en massa, as if they had a chat about it first. Destroying the earnings of a post, even ones that got hundreds of upvotes! But no logarithmic that could help the writer of that post. Also some measurements that show actuall arbitrariness 'elitist' behaviour that ruined some accounts their reputation. Give an account power and you'll see it's true nature appear...
And I have let 'sweet' talking big owning Steem Power accounts twist me around quite a bit, I'm almost ashamed to admit. But I still refuse to say that some Bitcoin fanatics were right in that Steem was set up as a get rich quick scheme for those who started it. What I have to admit though is what I know and what I see. There is proof that Steem(It) has become an oligarchy. And that there is a collaboration between the biggest VEST shareholders. It is biased towards to fame and fortune trending, the competition is absolutely unfair. Because a few large stakeholders, the oligarchs decide who gets rewarded big time and who gets roasted badly.
Now I can proof this, you can, they can themselves, there is not equal chance at all, it is biased, the potential payout is predetermined. And, I'm willing to keep an open mind. To believe that it was not ment to become an oligarchy on purpose, but now that we got to that reality. Why would I want to stay, or ask others to join if nothing is done about it to change this for the good of the community? That is what is getting on my nerves, to be honest. Political answers like: "Don't be jealous of the succes of others." No, I even like to see really talented accounts getting good payouts! What I disapprove of is an apparant biased system that favours those who allready have an advantage to even get more of a head start, over and over again! Please change it, now!
The reward system is just 10% of the total Steem created, did you know?
The network creates Steem, every round, the actually amount does not even matter. Let's put that at 100%. And when you did not know this, you might want to take it in slowly... Only 10% of that is used for curation, for distributing the possible reward payout. That is being split up in Steem, Steem Power and Steem Backed Dollar at payout, the '$' is merely a symbol for value. Maybe it is better to replace it with the '~' symbol, but that aside, be aware that just 10% out of a 100% network created Steem is used for the reward system. So, where is the other 90% going you now might ask. Well, that is divided amongst the shareholders every round. I'll leave you some time to let that sink in a bit...
So from the 100% Steem created by the network, every round, just 10% is used to reward those who actually put time and effort in creating posts. They are the ones that make Steem worth while investing, or dumping it as fast as they can. The post creators will decide if SteemIt gets visitors, if it will go on. Because if the talented account holders stop posting and start cashing in while powering down, then Steem soon will be history. Why, well, if that happens, then the relative amount of posts per day will drop. Therefore the quality per post will drop, creating a downwards pulling vortex. And even the big fame and fortune account holders will not want to go down with a sinking ship.
Am I angry, yes you bet ya I am! Because when it hit me I was really disappointed. It was in my face all the time, why did I not get it throught to my scull sooner? And I blame myself also for promoting something that I cannot stand, now I know. I got woken up by some posts that started to raise questions. And I had usefull conversations that made me rethink what I wanted to believe. So, I opened the Whitepaper again and saw it was indeed tuned towards big stakeholder. The way it was innitially constructed to work.
And that also means stakeholders get a part of the 90% of the total 100% Steem created by the network every round! Payment relative to the amount of VESTs they are holding at the moment of distribution. Only for holding Steem Power, yes, that goes for every account. But then it really started to hit me bad... There are other far reaching consequences that I strongly disapprove of. And it has to do with voting power that is connected to the amount of owned Steem Power. That is where the analogy with a stakeholder company even goes more crooked. Forget the 90-10 percentage division, it even gets worse then this.
Now, Tone Vaye, may have had a point, 'curses' ...
This is probably one of the hardest things to do, admitting that Tone Vaye was on to something. He is well know as a Bitcoin purist in the crypto world and well, he burned Steem(It) right down to the ground. Still, I refuse to use his strong accusing words, but I have to be honest and admit that I actually have big doubts now. The bad thing being that it is out there in the open, for everyone to see. Spreading FUD? Come on, this is real, and just as I can prove it, you can! Do the math, read the whitepaper and then see if the developers are willing to change it. Because the largest stakeholders in Steem VESTs, also known as Steem Power, allready get a large part of the Steem pie, 90% every round. That is outside of the reward system, but there they also get a piece of the 10% pie? The 90% value is not enough...?
At first I had a case of real bad cognitive dissonance: "No this can't be right, right, why would they do this, it is unfair competition... Anyone would have noticed this, right? What the ....!" And then it sunk in, it is true. It is biased towards large amounts of Steem Power stakeholders. Not only in the distribution of the 90% that never makes it to the market in the first place, but even worse. They also dictate how the 10% of Steem that is going into the market for the reward system is being divided. No stockholder based company works that way. They stay off the working floor where the actuall production is done. This is absolutely rubbish and it should be fixed, right away!
Even if the 10-90 ratio division, of the Steem that is being created every round, is allready somewhat questionable, connecting reward voting power to owned Steem Power is just creating unfair competition. It is biased towards and oligarchy. And that will give SteemIt a bad name, crashing the price of Steem soon if nothing changes. Really, more and more accounts will start to understand that there is a large stakeholder dominated reward system. And then the shait will really start to hit the fan.
Decouple Voting Power and Steem Power, is a fair solution
If the connection between Steem Power and Voting Power is being disconnected then the rewarding system would become more of a fair competition. The actual Voting Power could be fine tuned, and the horrible Voting Percentage slider could get lost. I've had the experience of getting 1% votes from some 'big' Steem(It) account the day they got their 'toy' first. Never saw them again after that, of course. It is all on the blockchain to be seen. Well, not me, I either go for a vote, or not, resteem or not, reply or not. All the other ideas seem to be biased towards an oligarchic system of control and I guess that makes me one of the real humanist voluntary objectives executors on this platform. See, that is why I believe all 'isms' that want to decide how human society should be governed are socialistic in their true nature.
So, there is a lot of talk about voluntaryism, anarchism and so on, but the way it is now is an elitists oligarchy of the worst kind. But, it can easily be changed for the good. Split up the Voting and Steem Power connection. Because voting is taking care of dividing the rewards for participation, for creation, for attracting attention. And that is equivalent important to all accounts. In this the Steem Power owners only create a value platform, not a real contribution in adding actuall time and energy. One can have VESTs as an investment without doing anything else. Large stakeholders could hold meetings about some decisions to be made. Then their stake amount would actually count. But not in the actual reward system that is the Fruit Of Work {FOW} of the actual content creators!
And we all are stakeholders, but with different amounts of stake in the Steem system. Some actually had a dream of being able to earn value by putting in time and effort with posts as a result. And many of those are disappointed, and I'm getting that now, absolutely, I'm sorry I did not see through the biased system before.
Now I think I need to get something for my headache
Shareholders could hold a meeting about the distribution ratio of the total of Steem that is created by the network every round. Then the ones with the most VESTs would maybe care to vote for even less, a 95-5% ratio. But that may cause the content providers, the ones who post good material that attracts attention, to leave very fast, I know I would. While going the other way around 20-80% ratio, might attract a lot of potential posting accounts that just put out garbage. Now this is something that I see as being a subject for the shareholders to use their power of influence. How the stakeholder 'company' on a blockchain should go about in keeping the value of STEEM up, or at least stable.
But in the production line there should be one account one vote, limited by a percentage that drops on every vote. And takes time to recover over a period of time, like a capacitor. That is the only way to have a fair competition, I think. This will put a stop to fanatic bots, and this will put an end to the current oligarchy. And consensus in votes will determine what content gets what part of the 10% reserved Steem reward pool. Where the actually vote power is calculated in the percentage that it is at. With the logaritmic calculations still in place so 'self voting' is 'winner takes all' proof.
And I think the largest VEST shareholders would agree to change this, for they do still get the largest part of the Steem created by the network every round. Because 90% Steem value distributed in ratio to shares holding is not bad for an investment, right?
Because it seems just unfair to me that the big Steem Power holders allready are getting a lage piece of the Steem pie. And then they also can dominate the production of content, while even getting a big part from the 10% in the proces? Now, that must be a mistake, it cannot be done on purpose. Please tell me it is not biased towards an oligarchy elitist system by design...
And I hope you, dear reader do understand that it actually works like this, but do not take my word for it, read the whitepaper. Even if it is outdated, the distribution of the network generated Steem is still much the same.
And what if I'm wrong? Then please feel free to reply and explain, because the way I see it now, it actually can be proven as being unfair and biased. I have never used the downvote and I still refuse too now. Allready wrote about the need for a block function.
So if you decide to reply and I think you are out of line, by showing disrespect or by verbal attack, I will simply ingnore it. But I cannot not withhold others from flagging you nor me. That is something that makes me doubt to post this.
But as you can read this, you know I actually decided to do so. Hopefully things will trigger an open discussion. Even better, I hope that Steem Power and Voting Power will be split up soon.
Have a good one.