Embracing Linear Equality on Steem: Unlearning the Sucker & Maximising the Arsehole in Me
Hey guys, just want to announce that it's high time for me to go nuclear. There's just no better decision now but to join the race of reclaiming our votes. Let's leave the masses of "contributors" buying their votes instead. There's no such thing as unconditional anymore. Mama once told me:-
"Whoever you become, just make sure that you try your best. Arsehole or sucker, be the best. Push it to the limit!"
As a dedicated Steem supporter, I'll start embracing the now-popular vote-monetising lifestyle while claiming to grow the ecosystem, give new users the exposure they deserve, and make the world a better place. The greedy arseholes are winning so I have no choice but to join their game to keep up. This is new reality on Steem that I have to adapt to.
The maths just don't check out anymore seeing that my arsehole is getting smaller while the other arseholes are getting bigger over time. Steem has turned into complete arseholenomics ever since HF Equality came about back in mid-2017. It has been 9 months now and being an arsehole is the new norm. No way I'll stand by the sidelines anymore, dwelling in selfless suckernomics.
Please note that my self-maximising arsehole mode now includes the following:-
Option A: Selling my voting power via SP delegation. If all @freedom does is just effectively shoving votes back up their own arsehole via vote selling, why shouldn't anyone else follow suit? But seriously, I would prefer not to succumb to this move. Who am I kidding? Votes that I've freely given out are now being sold by the same people that I've been voting on over the past year.
Option B: Selective support-for-support voting. We'll vote each other periodically at the same power. The only catch is that we must like each other along with the nature of our content and engagement with the blockchain. Overall, the arrangement has to be a beneficial for the larger community. But contacting each other for such an arrangement is weird, so I'll be the one that votes on you first. So if you have relatively lower Steem Power, consider powering up over time and I'll match your return votes. In the event that you're not returning votes, I'll be discontinuing further support. No hard feelings. It's just business. On the other hand, you may also begin initiating by giving me a phat vote if you're of a sizable account or else I will never notice. No guarantees though because if your account is generally made up of trivial content, I wouldn't come back with a return vote. I may also cut my support anytime without notice whatsoever. Please treat me the same. Let's keep it casual and professional. Actually, this seems like what most have been doing all along. I've been slow to catch up. If we ever run out of content ideas, we can always interview each other every other day.
For Option B, is there a voting service application out there? Some support-for-support voting contract that regulates voting power between any consenting parties over time (because we'll most likely have different posting frequencies and all that), at whatever desired conditions and configurations. Being able to automate this in my voting ring will be perfect. It's just fair.
So how about rewarding contributors that are adding value to the platform? I'll do it through supporting community curation groups like @curie and others. But of course, I will not be trying to take back 100% of my votes because I'm just not a 100% asshole 😇. For karma's sake, I'll be a non-asshole about 10% of the time. I will definitely support truly exceptional contents, accounts, and initiatives with no-strings-attached. The 100% cutt-throat capitalist asshole is just not me. I'll be a good boy and stay benevolent at least 10% of the time *cough*.
This will be a drastic move away from my usual ~98% non-conditional, selfless voting over the past 2 years. It's time to completely change that, so let's get down to business. I've had enough being the sucker. Selective support-for-support voting is the way to go now. So let me know if you have what it takes to be in my super exclusive elite circle.
I'll start posting frequently now without caring about my comments section at all other than voting only on really awesome ones that don't waste minutes of any readers' time with self-indulgent responses. If you're annoying, especially through relentless self-marketing on my comments section.. you'll get a forever-mute right away. Let's push it to the limit, guys. Join me!
My 2018 Steem Resolution:-
- 90% selfish voting (either by support-for-support votes, selling SP delegations, self-voting, etc, they're all effectively the same).
- 10% non-selfish voting.
- Vote selling is out of the question for me as I want to truly support exceptional contents, accounts, and initiatives. But now I just can't give votes out freely anymore, so I have to be an upfront arsehole and demand tangible reciprocation for my support. Unconditional voting will only be made available for the really extraordinarily valuable stuff, so I'm sorry if you're just contributing memes and fart jokes on the blockchain. Okay, unless if they're really really good.
Please re-evaluate linear rewards critically.
This is something you and I have been discussing for months in private, so without a doubt I agree with what you've said.
We're currently at a point where most SP are claiming back their vote rewards one way or another (bid bots, self votes, delegation market, vote swapping etc). It's not longer a problem of bad actors, if it ever was in the first place. It's a problem of misaligned economic incentives causing individual profit maximization strategy to be harmful to the entire system overall.
I'm guessing many whales are in the very same position as myself: we don't want this to continue. Unfortunately, we also can't trust other large stakeholders to refrain from the allure of profit maximization, so we all protect our own stake by partaking in the very activity that's deteriorating our investment. It's tragedy of the commons in full swing.
The issue isn't that bots or individual actors are malicious or greedy; very few people invest in crypto for altruistic reasons. When designing an economic system, you must assume everyone will attempt to maximize profits. When individual efforts to maximizing profits contribute to the value of the whole, then it's a successful system. But when the optimal profit maximization strategy under your system undermines the value of the whole, then you have a flawed rewards structure, that is to say misaligned economic incentives.
The entire economic system cannot be designed to depend on the selfless sacrifice of moral saints paying a high price in order to just keep in check the perfectly rational actions of individual profit maximizers, which is where we are now and why the battle is failing.
In short, readjust the economic incentives to alter profit maximizing behavior. Under other systems such as superlinear and higher curation for example, profit maximization does not involve direct or indirect self votes and bid botting market have difficulty in price discovery. Of course other alternative economic incentives/curves/curation rates etc can be explored.
It's unfortunate that you were the only person I was able to convince that this was the correct approach, and you weren't able to convince anyone else when you reached out individually either. The scope of the problem is at the level of economic incentives (I believe Linear, despite all its advantages, is the predominant cause of this), not at the level of individual bad actors. And trying to fight it on the level of individual bad actors would likely fail.
Umm...I’ve been critical of HF19 (and 18 and parts of 17) since before they were implemented. All of this was predicted.
I’ve been labeled a troll, TOXIC!, and any number of other names for daring to call out the utter bullshit that was sold to the ignorant community last year. I’ve lost a lot of support for being outspoken about it as well.
Where TF were you guys last year...last fall...this past winter...while myself and others have been pointing all of this crap out and calling for reevaluation and rollbacks/changes? How about supporting witnesses like us (me, @pfunk, @felixxx) who actually know WTF we’re talking about and saw all of this coming?
Lately, I keep seeing people mentioning all of the problems we have and criticizing the “leadership” around here...and then being praised and rewarded for it. (Like your now $40 comment.) Meanwhile, I’ve essentially been blacklisted for saying this same shit for the past year - before it was “cool.”
I hope you guys are finally, actually learning this time. STINC is not doing us any favors. The top witnesses aren’t doing us any favors by rubber-stamping STINC’s HF proposals. People need to wake TF up around here...unless we’ve already accepted that this is a platform created by scammers and for scammers - because that’s precisely where we’re headed.
Another well written post @kevinwong . I have resteemed it. It is a very thought provoking situation and the feeling that our support is eroding away in favor of bid bot delegation and heavy self voting is very real.
There is no easy solution to this issue. Before you got here @trafalgar we had just as many problems if not worse problems. We had a hand full of god kings ruling us that got here 3 weeks before myself and a lot of other content creators did. There were a lot of catfish / sock puppet accounts soaking up a good chunk of the reward pool.
Personally as frustrating as certain things have been I would take this version of STEEM over the 2016 version all day every day.
If we went back to the old reward curve and my vote went to $0.02 this place would absolutely come unglued. All the content creators who weren't already STEEM rich would be back to being a court jester trying to impress a handful of kings.
The price would totally collapse again because people would see that they could power up even $10,000 and their vote would still be worth basically nothing so they would realize that it is pointless and leave.
I don't have an absolute solution but I think the delegation initiatives to the 3rd party apps like DLive, DTube, Busy are great and maybe some substantial power should be granted to more community building leaders who have been selflessly upvoting others for months / years to keep creators engaged.
Also another remedy to certain situations is having top 40 witnesses agree to address issues like @haejin in accordance to what the community wants. Possibly creating a web app that we can steem connect to and everyone who has a reputation over a certain number can vote on solutions. Each account with over 1000 SP and a Rep of 55 could vote on what to do and the Witnesses would carry out the communities wishes or something of that nature.
Otherwise we end up like the Matrix with no Neo to take care of some of these issues once and for all.
The current state is okay as well, but it'll certainly tend to cynical voting which slows down the growth of the network. n2 brings the god kings, so we'll go for semi god kings lol.. with the likes of n1.2 or n1.3.. somewhere on the lower side near linear.
I would choose “Semi-God “King Kongs” Do they actually exist!? 😜
@brianphobos got a valid point!
Please don’t bring me back to “those” days....
I prefer to stay in the close to near linear “underground” and struggle with dragons.
BTW: Yo Mamma is a wise woman @kevinwong at least admit when you become an Arse!
Those days were shit and am glad the new ones never had those days..or perhaps they should have experienced it to appreciate what they have now.
Semi-god King Kongs are very apt...
Am hopeful that it is out in the open and can be solved..no matter how naive that sounds.
Exactly!!!
Was out of engagement in here for a while. How have you been? Your mom? Going to SF3?
where and when is SF3? I know nothing about it but want to go @immarojas
oh well not easy to be one here lol
My worry is that even as it stands right now oftentimes when a person does the math of how much they would have to power up to get a certain value on their upvote the numbers don't seem amazing. It is more about getting in an accumulating and then when the price spikes that is when the bigger money is made. My worry with even n^1.2 or n^1.3 is that the numbers would be even less enticing at the lower levels for how much a persons vote would be worth which would scare off investors who want to power up anything less than about $100,000 worth.
It is true that the system as it stands currently does incentivise bad behaviour. By bad behaviour, I mean actions that both transgress broader moral norms, and are detrimental to the longevity the system itself.
But, it is also true that unethical behaviour in that context can legitimately still be seen as unethical, and therefore attract moral condemnation. The fact that the system incentivises such behaviour does not remove anyone's moral responsibility.
For example, a society that incentivises violence against children is not what I would call a good system. It's also completely coherent to say that individuals committing the violent acts are doing the wrong thing. The only people interested in excuses are cultural relativists and the aggressors themselves. People with a more firm idea of the ethics of that situation, whether they are part of that society or not, will not run such a line of reasoning.
As you correctly observe, a more relevant example is the commons dilemma. Overuse of a common un-owned or collectively owned resource might be incentivised by the context it occurs in. Yes, it is true that a good system would not do this. But it's also true that fairly rational good people (by which I mean minimally good, not 'moral saints', with a bit of common sense) would recognise this and act to change the system and restrain themselves to maintain equilibrium while redesigning the relevant parameters.
I guess you and I differ in that I don't think maximising profit at the ultimate expense of the system that creates it is rational. I agree that the system is flawed and that desirable behaviour that is good for the platform should align with profit maximisation. But none of the people involved in fucking it up, regardless of the size of their stake, get to absolve themselves of moral responsibility.
all that hard work and I cant seem to vote more then $0.01, and if i come back tomorrow to give you one more cent then i can't give it to another genius... Wha t a dilemma. Yet whales are able to shitvote on shitposts and dishes that make people shit
And anyone who implies that whales don't fully deserve the right to do so is a communist.
I'm a communist!
I'm in a community.
Does that now allow me to name them something back?
Something in the realm of anti-social hypocrites. If you see the irony in that...
No, I definitely agree with your last statement that profit maximization behavior right now is coming at the expense of the collective. Unfortunately, as I stated it's not that a lot of us whales can't see it, we just can't stop or trust other large stakeholders from doing it. It's similar to the prisoner's dilemma, except with so many trustless parties it's too costly to collaborate and we end up where we are. Because while everyone taking part is the worse possible outcome for the collective, not taking part while everyone else is is the worst possible outcome for the individual. I'm well aware that if we all clawed back our own votes it's worse than if we all didn't because the value loss in steem price (either falls or unrealized potential gains) in a rational market will exceed what we get. But it's sort of the game theoretical sub optimal place we're in and seemingly stuck.
I don't agree that prevailing ethical or social norms can be relied on to take precedence in an economic system. Maybe ideally this would be the case, but it's too far fetched. I do suggest what I consider a very realistic and far superior solution in my other reply to this very same post. Thanks for reading my take and voicing your views. I'm interested in seeing what you think of my suggested solution below.
https://steemit.com/funny/@kevinwong/embracing-linear-equality-on-steem-unlearning-the-sucker-and-maximising-the-arsehole-in-me#@trafalgar/re-kevinwong-embracing-linear-equality-on-steem-unlearning-the-sucker-and-maximising-the-arsehole-in-me-20180419t032538535z
In philosophy (which is my academic background and profession), 'moral saint' is used to denote a hypothetical agent whose every action is as morally good as possible. I don't think people need to be that good to make linear rewards work, but clearly more people would need to be 'better' than they are now (otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation).
Given my interest in non-ideal action-guiding theories, I should know better . Economic systems, systems of governance and government, conceptions of justice; none of these things should be designed for the way you wished people were - you have to design them to cope with the way people actually are.
This isn't an endorsement of some sort of moral determinism (so you are still not off the hook). Humans, and the societies they exist in exhibit and incentivise a range of levels of selfnessness, so I'm not peddling some idea the kind of assholery that steemit rewards is somehow reducible to a pre-theoretic notion of 'human nature'.
Incentives. I ponder John Rawls' theory of justice - he was quite happy to use economic inequality to incentivize desirable behaviour. For example, even though equality is good, inequality in the form of paying surgeons more than average is better. That's because it encourages people to become surgeons - but this ethical advantage only true if there's reasonable equality of opportunity to become a surgeon, and if the benefits of having surgeons are reasonably equitably available to all members of that society (via the notions of income redistribution and universal healthcare that so many people around here find so triggering).
This isn't about progressive taxation or other things that give voluntaryists nightmares. But the principle is the same. We want big investors and whales to exist, but we also want their existence to produce a beneficial effect for smaller users. Actually it's more than 'want' - we need them to produce benefit for smaller stakeholders, otherwise we'll end up right where we are now: heading toward a distinctly uncertain economic future.
So yes, curation does need to be incentivised. I am not sure what exact curve the rewards need to be set at, but I can see the argument for changing it. On top of that, we also need to try and educate and encourage people to not game the system, and for whales live up to the responsibilities of being major stakeholders.
Trouble with all this is that you need to get the witnesses, who are controlled by these large stakeholders, to agree to a change that means these stakeholders either make less money, or have to put more effort in to make the same amount of money. It might not technically be regulatory capture, but IMHO, it's pretty analogous.
One thing that did occur to me would be to change how witness voting worked, then watch the problem solve itself in an organic, 'bottom up', way. We can't have one account = one witness vote, for obvious reasons. And with the ability to use bidbots to quickly raise one's reputation, weighting voting by rep won't help much either. What you could do have the stake-weighted witness voting work in a non-linear way, so that while the ability to choose witnesses grows with stake, it grows less with each additional vest. You could do this with either a log function - tweaked to not allow hordes of tiny account to choose the top witnesses - or maybe a cube root function - something like that, my calculus is pretty rusty. Whatever the case, if witnesses were suddenly more beholden to people in the minnow to dolphin range, then maybe they'd suddenly they would have both the motivation and ability to do more than act in the short term interest of their biggest voters.
Or not - it's just an idea.
So there you go - I agree this needs to be addressed systematically. But I want to be clear on one thing: If a system incentivizes bad actions, this does not magically mean that bad actors have no moral responsibility. For that to be true, it would mean that moral goodness or badness can be purely reduced to what is incentivized or not. I'm not saying that isn't the case, but you sure as hell haven't established that position to my satisfaction. Self-voting, delegating for profit rather than curating, low-effort spam, multi-thousand account voting rings - all of these things are currently incentivized, and all of these things (to a greater or lesser extent) also deserve condemnation.
Unless someone's steemit-assholery is needed to pay the rent or feed their kids, I'm not interested in excuses. I'm glad you are focused on solutions (doubly so, considering how much more influence you have than the average person here). But, incentives or not, you are still responsible for your choices. Don't expect people to let your behaviour pass just because the system rewards it, or 'everyone else is doing it'.
great stuff @samueldouglas - as a philosopher feeling grumpily that i have to get to grips with the dismal science, steemit is a microcosm where all the problems i'm seeing jump out out at you at high speed. here are my not very coherent thoughts thus far: people can game any system and they will. at the same time, altruism is a force in any economic / cultural system, though as a 'percentage' of the determining force, it can get very low or very high, [taking a historical / anthropological sweep]. misalignment of incentives, so that people maximising their gains by exploiting the incentives provided by a system are also acting in ways inimical to the system's achieving its declared aims or even continuing to exist at all seems the norm with most systems. [e.g. capitalism treats waste as an externality that can be dumped without expense into the envrionment, thereby degrading the conditions that capitalism needs to continue, i.e. life on earth.] the aim here at steemit, i presume, is to provide the conditions for 'good content', of use to people, to be produced and distributed, in a way that rewards content creators so that they can create, and which removes the economic exploitation and ideological dominance of middle men - the publishing industry, tin-pan alley, hollywood, FB etc. Also, it seems that steemit hoped to broaden the base of content providers so that anyone can express themselves in the space. Though this latter isn't directly about getting good content, it can be thought of as a maximising condition for good content to emerge and for new creators to hone their craft etc. It mitigates the elitism that might grow out of the concern for 'good content'. Of course, there has to be the means in place to maintain the infra-structure on which the system sits, and economically, this costs. Questions arising now: what is 'good content' and who is to say? Can a system be optimised just by tweeking parameters? Thoughts: game theory has a very thin idea of culture. Rich, complex culture, including ethics, however, is bound to be an influential vector in any ecosphere/economy and that is where we have room to manouvre past the mechanistic and probably hopeless game of tweeking parameters. [e.g. print more money!] Culture building is a must here IMO. Communism? Hell yes. Not Stalinism, Trotskyism or even Marxism - but the 'naturally occuring communism' without which ordinary human life in communities would not be possible.
You raise some very good points with the witnesses. In a way they represent our politicians here and like our real world politicians seem just as susceptible to being bribed to do the highest payers bidding. I thought @freebornangel made a good point on another post in suggesting the ability to down vote witnesses we feel have been led astray and no longer have the platform's best interests at heart.
In traditional politics, large stakeholders normally have to work quite hard to achieve control of politicians and public servants - look at the amount of money lobbyists spend in most democracies! The weighted stake voting system instantly circumvents this inconvenience, making the largest holders of SP instant kingmakers.
My reading of the whitepaper is that this was completely deliberate, as the largest stakeholders are supposed to (a) attract the most scrutiny on their actions and (b) have the best interests of the network at heart. Such beliefs strike me as a little quaint now.
Brilliant work here. Thank you for your ideas and input.
Thanks for the feedback. I love trying to solve complex problems, and it doesn't get much more complex than this! More importantly, if we can make steemit/steem really work, this should inform approaches to other economic systems.
We are part of an experiment after all :)
I've just read and resteemed your comedyopenmic post, quality!
An experiment indeed. It's on those grounds that I'd love to attract a broader diversity of ideological viewpoints to steemit.
Thanks for the resteem & feedback on my comedyopenmic post. It's a strangely effective way to make a point.
O BOY, and then you manage to top your previous post.
And i can only vote $0.00 cent LOL
@samueldouglas, you are a breath of fresh air. You have my full 100% upvote, at a current value of about $0.01.
I'll try not to spend it all at once ;) Seriously, thanks - the kind words are worth a lot in their own right.
Agreed with everything but this
My take on the curve https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/reward-curve-doesn-t-discourage-self-voting
I think what messed up incentives was to reduce votes per day from 40 to 10. This was a very good measure to prevent self voting as self voters needed to put out 4 times more content than now. This is why haejin is posting 10 times a day, put votes back to 40 and he will have to post 4 times more content to maximize self vote.
https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/history-is-a-great-teacher
That's 4x more crap bloating the blockchain for the same result.
Well firstly I'm very glad that you agree to some extent to what I said
Namely that this isn't a problem of bad actors - people maxmizing profits under the rules aren't good or bad, they're what you should expect. And it's up to the people who are making the rules to come up with incentives that align with and best promote the behavior they wish to see the most.
Please have a look at my other reply here where I provide a solution:
https://steemit.com/funny/@kevinwong/embracing-linear-equality-on-steem-unlearning-the-sucker-and-maximising-the-arsehole-in-me#@trafalgar/re-kevinwong-embracing-linear-equality-on-steem-unlearning-the-sucker-and-maximising-the-arsehole-in-me-20180419t032538535z
To address your concern I actually think that's exactly what would have with 40 votes. He'll just vote 40 times, not bother with long posts, maybe 5 long posts and 35 comments on all of them. He's not wrong or evil or whatever to do this. Just rational. We can align rational profit maximization interests with beneficial behavior too, please have a look at my reply linked above
Oh how I want to like you. You're super funny and intelligent. But See your last paragraph:
This is what should convince you you're wrong. Yet you're blind to it. And now you have caused one of the most generous people on steem to act like you.
You Personally Have now made The World a worse place than it would be without your interference.
But you have a great talent, and can make that ^ comment no longer true.
I hope that was your goal, because that's the outcome.
Everyone should be required to read @idikuci’s statement in bold, very half hour or so. It should be rephrased as a question and put down by the. Voting and Posting Buttons:
“Is what you are about to do going to make the World a worse place than it would be without your interference?”
The problem around here is NOT economics. Profit Maximization is a middle-brow utilitarian ethical system for middle-brow minds.
Except as intellectually vapid as the system is (and it is...people who have moved beyond first-year college ideas know this in an obvious way) the real problem is not about it’s logical failings, but, rather, it’s failings on a higher level of cognition associated with learned empathy, synergizing rationality and reason with controlled puroposeful emotions, and better understanding the complexity of individuals and the civilizations we conceptualize as making them up.
This is a longer (and less well-said) version of Idi’s idea...Avoid doing something that makes the world a worse place than had you done nothing at all.
(If you have any inclination to upvote this comment for some unknown reason, please let me encourage you to upvote @Idikuci’s instead of you haven’t already done so. Or upvote for an artist on here that made something that touched you).
what are you doing, don't miss out ..... you upvote trafjin 100%, he upvotes you 100% or 1% whichever comes first
go jerk it...come-on baby!
I agree with you @trafalgar your comment ia very knowledge, i learn many knowledge from your comment .
Nice to see you here, ini steemit
I mostly don't buy this part. There was a theory that voter-allocated rewards would help grow the investment, and despite its imperfection we can't prove that it hasn't. After, there are many users here, the market cap of Steem is within a factor of 2 of all-time-high (which is pretty close in crypto volatility terms).
However, even if that theory turns out to be false, it doesn't follow that not distributing rewards (instead reclaiming them) will actually deteriorate the investment. There are other paths to growth and even just having a very functional blockchain (no direct transaction fees, 3 second confirmation, etc.) is already worth a lot. How is this not a very competitive offering in the blockchain market, even if all the reward stuff were completely removed?
Yes, this is just a hard disagreement
No way to know how well or poorly Steem would have done with less imperfections to make a point of comparison
And while I suppose it's not unreasonable to think a fast, inflation based blockchain may do well as a pure currency, I think Steem's competitive edge and ultimate value lies in its ability to attract user numbers through its social media interface. A lot of stuff you can say either way on this matter, but in the end, our gut instincts just don't converge here.
STEEM is only minimally inflationary long term. The planned inflation rate at 20+ years is 0.9%. While the inflation is nominally supposed to be used to reward users at this point, it could also be viewed as an initial distribution phase (with inflation declining by 1% per year) not unlike Bitcoin's halving schedule.
But can it do that? So far this has not been shown to actually work...
I'm not really a strong partisan on the matter at this point, more being open to different approaches. Let's say the voting-based social rewards just doesn't work out, then what? Curl up and die, or pursue other paths to growth and success?
Anyway, I'm certainly interested in your ideas and others' ideas how to improve the effectiveness of voted rewards. It is just the part about it being a definite choice of that or a deteriorated/failing investment that I don't necessarily accept.
@lemouth I'm glad others are starting to see this perspective. This is mainly a reply to you but I want a little more visibility so chose to write it as a reply to the post. Thank you for being one of the few who are starting to see things this way.
If the Steem economic system has decided it wants to reward the most banal, effortless, proof of brain dead and by all other metrics valueless behavior the most, then don't be surprised that's exactly what people do.
Don't be surprised if most of the large stakeholders sell all their votes to bots that exploit the rewards pool at 100% efficiency, or self vote 10 of their own comments every day, or lease it to the market for high returns that can only realistically be paid if the borrower used all those delegated votes on himself.
This is no longer a problem of good or bad actors. They may want to raise the most money to cure cancer, or kill puppies, we don't know. The point is we're choosing to go with economic incentives that rewards the dumbest and most pointless behavior for the platform the biggest returns.
The Good News: It is trivial to prove that this is fixable
All you have to do is instate a new economic scheme under which the way to maximize returns is not just mindlessly sell your votes to the highest bidder or vote yourself up 10 times a day. I'll give you a terribly impractical example but one that will highlight this point.
Simply bump curation rewards to 80% (not advocating this, just an example). Notice how now it becomes trivially easy to beat some guy who's only getting the value of their own votes, either through selling or self voting? All I have to do is to find content early enough that I believe will have at least some interests after I vote. So I get 80% of the value of my own vote as curation, and only need 80% of the subsequent votes to make up for the 20% difference. (I know it's not how precisely curation works, but you see my point).
I'm not advocating for 80% curation under linear. I foresee problems at economic equilibrium that's about as bad as what we have now. But one cannot deny that different incentives promote different behavior. Because behavior that maximizes returns under one economic scheme may not at all be competitive under another. We're not stuck with bid bots and self votes at all.
We just have to come up with an economic system that rewards desirable behavior that promote the value of the entire system the most. It is very possible for a different economic system to reward exceptional curation and authorship far more than mindless self cannibalistic voting behavior. Getting the details right is non trivial, and there will be trade offs, but I think we can get something that's almost utopia compared to what we have right now.
A lot of heated debate right now is occurring under the misguided assumption that the system has to operate at the combined self sacrifice of returns of individual actors. This is just flatly untrue. It is also a losing fight which explains the futility you're feeling. Right now there's an attempt to force individual self voting whales to vote at least 20% on others. What's the best case scenario here? You spend $100 to take $100 from him and place it back into the rewards pool, only to have at least $70 of it go back to others just like him. Let's say he surrenders and just recedes into a bot, so now he's taking even more from the pool because it's 100% efficient. Or worse, he finds some other bots that use hundreds of accounts to self vote their own comments to hide his tracks, taking just as much from the pool, and bloats up the blockchain. There is no deterrence factor at all. Are these really the trenches in which good actors think is worthy to hunker down and fight to the death for?
We don't fight people who are maximizing their returns because it's fighting people for not being sufficiently generous. That's not a sensible fight to have. The economy cannot rely on the acts of moral saints alone to be sustainable. We should fight to introduce a new economic system where individual profit maximizing behavior will contribute to the value of the whole platform, rather than erode it. We let everyone's profit maximizing efforts work for us, not against us.
For the record, I think something like slightly superlinear (not as much as before) with 50% curation, burning curation instead of donating to author in the first 30 mins (something hf20 is already introducing I think), maybe a separate downvote pool. It's difficult to predict what it would be like at economic equilibrium so coming up with alternative schemes is always a challenge. But honestly, any reasonable guess would be far superior to what we have now.
Thanks for the (pretty long) answer wit the very detailed examples.You summarized the situation very well.
People however could be generous, if the difference with not being generous is not dramatically large. Today, if one is generous, one loses a lot. So, it is clear that most large stakeholders won't be generous on a logical ground, and this is what is happening. So no surprize.
As said above, this is the only logical consequence. People (including whales) want to make money somehow, and this is the best way for getting the largest amount of gains without any effort.
The difference with what I would call a more reasonable option (like maximising the curation rewards to play with the social network card) is too large. If this difference would be smaller, as said above, it will be easier to be generous as even with a loss, the gains will still be large. For the records, I can say that I am already happy that some (rare) whales still dedicate a fraction of their VP (or more) to help curation, accepting to give up on some easy money. But this is, as you said, generosity, and there is no way that this would represent any other thing than a nice exception of the global behavior.
I guess that changing the economical system is probably the only way. I don't see any at the moment, as trying to change human behaviors never work. Having an economical model where (hopefully reasonable) curation would be rewarded without killing the authors is probably the best option. However, maybe something not as extreme as it was before. Otherwise, we end up with a system where only large stakeholders get something in curating (if I am not too wrong about the ancient system).
To finish, I am happy to read about what you mention for hf20. TBH, I was not following, mainly because I have started to lose interests in what was going on (and I am in a far too low position for having any of my comment seriously considered, so...). I just hope things will improve at some point.
In any case, I will continue doing what I do here (at least for now). I am just a guy trying to do things that I think are right. This is easier to say when one is not a large stakeholder, as one has nothing to lose in doing so ^^
I think we pretty much totally agree. Generosity certainly helps, but an economic system that rewards the most effortless and valueless behavior the highest while solely relying on the generosity of others is doomed to fail.
It's true that there will always be trade offs. A good basic test is this: what economic system would be required for people who take the time to curate and thus do something good for the entire platform be rewarded more than if they were just to mindlessly sell their votes or upvote themselves 100%. My guess is a slighly superlinear curve and curation no less than 40% at least, possibly 50%. While on paper it looks like authors are getting less, in practice when no one is sufficiently incentivized (outside of generosity) to curate, good authors right now are getting far less. Finding good content early must provide the finder a higher return on average than if they were to just use all their votes on themselves for this place to function properly.
hi traf, i just wanted to say that i'm really glad to see that you've re-invested back almost 10% of your upvotes to support comments and other post like this one, and also that you have vote for 2 worthy witnesses @curie and @pfunk
i understand clearly that the system is non sustainable due to the number of large stakeholders increasingly delegating to bots and self-upvoting, but delaying the inevitable will give Steemit Inc. time to implement a solution without scaring away new Steemain in the droves and causing new massive FUD to drop Steem unnecessarily back to extremes like $1.3 until change is implemented
EOS is coming out earliest July. Probably between release to December this year, they will announce the name of their new social-network component running native. Then we'll begin to see a mass adoption (aka direct competition) and migration from mainstream social-media to crypto starting in 2019 to both EOS and Steem.
I hope you understand that even a 10%-20% contribution from you will contribute critical time for Steemit Inc.'s leadership, Steem blockchain coders, and witnesses to rectify and bring incentives back to quality content and retaining talents.
A quarter (3 months) is almost like 1 year crypto time, alot can change in next 3 months. Once again, thank you for making a difference, I'm sincerely proud that you went down from 98% to 90% in just 1 week time.
Upvoted 100% for your actions as well as your ideas and suggestions above, it sounds practical, and will likely give Steem new life towards a sustainable reward system that will promote growth, and help us maintain our head-start in accumulating a stronger user base.
See my comment below to add to your ideas to help us improve:
https://steemit.com/funny/@freebornangel/re-trafalgar-re-kevinwong-embracing-linear-equality-on-steem-unlearning-the-sucker-and-maximising-the-arsehole-in-me-20180420t150938837z#@dj123/re-freebornangel-re-trafalgar-re-kevinwong-embracing-linear-equality-on-steem-unlearning-the-sucker-and-maximising-the-arsehole-in-me-20180421t141441587z
@NED, @SNEAK, @ANDRARCHY ...... Please Come Read What @Trafalgar Suggested Above!
Please expand this comment into a full blog post.
I get what you are saying about the futility of fighting trench warfare against those putting personal profit over all other forms of value, but at least there we find a clear and present focus for our efforts.
Obviously my "we" is not whales, but "we" are watching and participating too. How do we fight to change incentives, if not at the level of our own participation and engagement? Who even has the power to change this, and what actions are they taking (or not taking) to this end?
You're right about curation rewards and I made many of these points not when HF19 was being deployed for linear rewards last year but way back in 2016 when curation rewards were first cut from 50% to 25%. It was clear to me this would give rise to massively increased amounts of vote buying and such, which it has.
None of these things really get at the core of the problem with voting for rewards (it probably cant really work well ever regardless of the curves, etc.) but it can be made worse by the system not recognizing that votes have a very real economic/monetary value and in ignoring that, encouraging people to circumvent the rules to realize that value. (The lack of incentive for downvotes suffers similar issues).
I think certain economic schemes can provide desirable behavior such as curation with enough of an edge to be competitive with behavior like vote selling or self voting without completely defeating the incentive to create content.
It's a difficult balance to strike, but it's probably possible to align selfish profit maximization behavior with effects that benefit the platform overall by tinkering around with the curve, curation and downvote incentives.
It's a good point. As you say 80%+ curation along with some skill in voting could easily exceed the value of vote selling. Unfortunately there is very little consensus for high curation like that (though a small core of stakeholders in favor of it) and not even all that much consensus to raise curation, say, back to the original 50%.
At least in the HF20 development branch a change was made to actually peg curation rewards at 25% overall instead of having them decline (to probably 10% or so) due to early votes. So that's a small bit of movement in a possibly-favorable direction.
Hi @smooth, thanks for clarifying the peg to 25% curation - that isn't overly obvious in the @steemitblog Velocity post.
Also, is there a place where the collective can view consensus to proposals like 80/20% curation?
Cheers.
@steemitblog posts and comments on those posts are probably the best place to see discussion of these proposals. Sometimes witnesses and major stakeholders post their opinions on their own blogs as well.
ok cheers.
Yeah I found looking through the older @steemitblog's comments section pretty interesting, particularly around the rewards curve proposals!
Hi @smooth, could you point me to that commit that pegs the curation rewards to 25%? I only found that one returning the reverse auction part to the pool instead of to the author, but that alone shouldn't make it 25% if I understand it correctly?
Ugh, I think you are right. In the original discussion it was intended to avoid shifting funds from curators to authors but I can see now that it obviously wouldn't do that. Instead of shifting funds from curators to authors as the current rule does, it shifts funds from curators to both future authors and curators (so at least 75% of this will still go to authors). It is an improvement to curation payout but only a small one.
Thanks for the confirmation!
Kev Wong. One of my fav Steem Ballers.
I was just spoke at the Steem Creators Conf in Las Vegas.
A lot of us were mulling this same issue.
I think your take is a proper response for the time being.
I'm also going to be pushing my content onto the trending page.
I put a lot of work into my stuff and I want a nice example of decent content to be represented on the trending page.
I think if good content shows trending it will up the moral of the community.
Good stuff.
PS. See you at STeemfest this year. Should be epic
Well, it started as a joke but if I have tears I would shed some this morning.
the only joke here is this post being tagged "funny."
The thing about votebots is that when steem was below 2$ it gave very good profits for newcomers. Who had no follower base (Like me).
So no matter how good your post is they could not get anything in return. But after using votebotes there was almost 10-30% profit in rewards comparing to money spent (Depending on steemit price fluctuations). And if you just joined steem - it's a lot!
After steem comes back to 3.5$ there would be almost zero profit and bots will lose all value. Whats the point in buying if you lose money. Only some reputation and being on trending (and also being flagged). So that is awful.
I find bid-bots addicting, I get a little high using them....hahah🤑
Wahahaha :D
It's people's choice to use or not, we are all free! And I'm not the exception.
But I still agree that it would be better without them and I'm also against spammers and one-photo-one-word post that is on trending.
Hehe, I am as well...but I don’t have an answer to help solve the problem🙁
Well, you ended up having a nice reward in this post, so I guess the content you published is quite interesting for more than 200 steemians.
I am with you in a way as part of us are here for the money but for me, it is the same story as in any other economy. Do things differently in a brilliant way and money will just come.
Things change, markets change and nothing lasts forever the same way. Steem is just about 2 years old and as the platform grows and more and more users jump in searching for the money, it is more and more difficult to just get money the easy way doing the same things than others do. Bots may work for a while but my personal sense is that eventually they will not be worth anymore.
I'd go for being unique, trying to engage with a big enough audience and publish interesting content. I know this is the long run, but no one ever said things are easy. Easy money doesn't last, it is the same in every market and this is what's happening here too.
Thanks for the post, I enjoyed reading it and seeing how most people experience the same feelings. We will hove see how everything evolves but for me, intervention should be minimum. Let the community rule itself.
Yup, it's better to just pave one's own way. However with the current reward curve, I feel it's pitting users in some competitive tunnel vision. I don't think that's ever a good thing..
Even if you maximise arsehole to the limit with steroids, you will still come back to being your normal self - a great man, after a while.
You can't change your nature :d
People will always go for the easiest food, like the yellow stone bears. They lived off the parks garbage heaps for several generations allowed visitors to feed the wild bears when they shut done the easy food most died from starvation. Making it easy for the bears to find food wasn’t helpful. We need to make sure Steemit stays wild and all of us have to use our wits and talents or we will all end up dependent and weak. This is true for all sustainable systems.
Remove the steemits garbage heaps! Also this article relates to flagging users who go for the easy profits...
http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/recreation/yellowstone-journal-outlines-difficulties-of-managing-bears-humans/article_a5c49609-96db-5f93-842a-736df034f17a.html
So I've learned that people should learn from bears. And bears should learn from people!!)
if you asked me what is the common nature of human being? "Greed". everybody wants to survive in steemit game economy, they do whatever it takes, because they don't have a talent, and they became an investor rather than a blogger, just as myself, no time for writing a quality content, because steemit is just my part time job, maybe someday i'll quit my job and focus on writing a quality content, i know the risk even writing a quality usually won't get notice, so people buy some upvote just to get attention from their hardwork they spend.
This is the right time to shamelessly promote my server:
https://steemit.com/udcffppeeal/@felixxx/udcffppeeal-more-info-winner-of-the-logo-contest
A sad day for the platform that another whale is so disillusioned that they "turn to the dark side".
My advice (if anybody listens to lowly Minnows) would be to stay true to who you are. Social media is good at exposing people for who they are. Some don't care whether they're exposed, some put on a facade to try and hide their true intentions, and others are inherently good. Either way, you can't PR your way out of a bad reputation like you could pre-Internet, pre-social media.
What few people seem to consider is that what you say, and do on Steemit, like every other social platform is very public, always "on the record" and recorded forever.
If you care at all about your personal brand, business brand or legacy (what your kids, or grandkids will think of you), you should think about Karma. I believe that ultimately, those who treat others kindly and care about "the whole", not just themselves are the ones who win.
Short-term riches will never win-out over long-term wealth.
Unfortunately, there's not an economic model which has ever been, or is ever likely to be invented which eliminates greed - at least until AI runs our finances.
But, on a lighter note:
Haha! Love this quote. It probably applies to other platforms more than Steemit (at the moment), but isn't it funny how "collaboration" has turned into "you interview me, I'll interview you"? Is that really as inventive as collaboration is nowadays?
Good luck man, whichever direction you ultimately choose :)