RE: Will Hardfork 21 Operant Conditioning Prepare You to Accept Social Credit?
"That demand has been proven to not be achievable catering to authors."
This is not true. Stake weighting has been used to extract rewards such that whales received ~90% of rewards. How is that 'catering to authors'?
@freebornangel often refers to the whale experiment, and you can ask him how reducing stake weighted extraction of the vast majority of rewards impacted creators.
You seem to not be aware of the impact of flags on the rewards pool, and how the rewards that have escaped whales' clutches are thereby made available to them for a second try. The most prolific flaggot has been Bernie, whose socks flew more flags than any other group of accounts to date. Have a look at how he profits thereby, self-voting his bots. None of the flags on my account met your speculation as to purpose, since I have never cashed out.
Demand is directly driven on Steem by users, and authors cashing out is not why user retention is below 5% today. It's due to profiteers extracting almost all rewards, and is exacerbated by the ability of flags to censor and demonetize accounts with less substantial stake. It's of note that the vast majority of Steem remains the stake of ninjaminers today, and only the expenditure of huge amounts of fiat to purchase those stakes could prevent that, which very few people could do, and fewer yet (apparently none) would find reasonable.
User retention is key to Steem price, and Steem price is reflecting the dismal retention rate. How halving author rewards, increasing flags by 25% of SP that is extracted from inflation - essentially a tax on rewards, adding a 10% tax for SPS, and decreasing the value of votes potential to the vast majority of users is going to improve retention is not clear.
In fact, it's ridiculously impossible.
We'll see that proved in the next week or two. During the coming crash, please consider how to actually cater to authors, because that's how to increase the price of Steem. If you want some examples, I have posted how this can be done before, and will be glad to reiterate how to do so.
We disagree on this. If it weren't true then there would be much less Steem sitting on exchanges because authors would be buying in creating a demand. Looking not only at current users, but the many who came and left, I feel confident in my belief most never bought one Steem and cashed out whatever they received. I imagine how different things could have been here if the majority that came would have bought in. Looking at some of the more popular bloggers here, several have large stakes (not whale size but decent) and some of them mention it was all earned, none bought. How different the picture would look here if the masses had decided to buy their way into a middle class here.
I fully understand how the flag impacts the reward pool, and how those with the most stake benefit the most from the rewards being returned to that pool. While I would never assert that malicious destruction of lower staked accounts is beneficial in many cases to the growth of the system here, I am not so quick to let the common users off the hook. I interacted with many here that have been of the mindset they would vote others at dust level despite not having to, under the assumption others should pay for dust sweepers if they wanted anything from the vote.
I agree with your assessment this fork will shake up the community, and that many will probably leave. Some will leave that are important to me, and that sucks. But I imagine those who come to milk will outnumber them.
Steem is having a crises in identity. The majority of users here came with no intent on investing in the project, only extracting from it. That is evident by how few are even minnows, how many aren't even close to it. It's easy to point at whales and blame them, but if the masses had come and bought into the system they wouldn't be searching for a community that wants to support the project enough to keep it from falling. They would already be here and it would be reflected in market ranking and price.
My cynicism in the project grew many months ago, and it was the gib me mines now mentality of the masses that hammered it home for me the current structure was unsustainable.