Is earning STEEM simply a function of your STEEM POWER?
Is it possible that the handful of people who own 99.9% of all STEEM power are simply voting each others posts, enriching themselves more by (1) taking the lions share of the curation points (which is proportional to the STEEM power of the voter) and (2) by awarding their friends a huge take for posts that are really just placeholders with next to no content?
Like this poorly written, content-less post that is merely a vehicle for 2 stock photographs that netted $300
https://steemit.com/photography/@arjunebt/2urpzs-haters-say-it-is-just-photo-shop-damn-what-you-say-it-real-or-not
Remembering that STEEM is awarded to posters based on the slice of the pie that the voter has, its important to realize just how unevenly Steem is distributed. ONE person has 113 million; 10 people have 2-6 million, and everyone else but the top 21 have less than 1 million.
Essentially, therefore, any post that is rewarded in any meaningful way has been upvoted by one of the top 21 people. And these people seem to recommend each others posts quite a lot - garnering lots of content rewards and curation rewards in the process.
So it appears that this is largely a way for a handful of people to launder currency to each other at present. If it was not, then only posts with original and valuable content would be rewarded. If anyone can find the flaw in this cursory analysis, feel free to reply. Because I'd like this to work and to be a genuine thing.
This is always going to be a trade-off between a get-rich-quick scheme that accumulates a bunch of "can you believe this is not photoshopped" posts and a place where posting valuable content is rewarded much more highly than "me too" posts. But it seems to me that the way to decide whether this is indeed the case or not is to ask yourself if the most highly rewarded posts are the best posts and whether the best posts are highly rewarded.
If the developers want to make this into a serious content site, it seems that the "whales" would be far better off rewarding genuine content developers than in gaming the system to reward themselves.
Apart from a certain interest in the idea, I have no stake either way; if it becomes a content site, I will generate content. If it becomes/remains an insider game, I will give a quiet sigh and move on. Time will tell, I suppose. Every system takes time to settle down. It really depends on the intent of the founders.
Right now it seems the votes go to people that are famous and can bring people to steemit not necessarily to good content.
It seems to me that they would be better off paying people cash incentives per facebook or twitter post, or per friend brought over, rather than handing each other steam power by posting total junk that degrades the platform. I for one was totally for this thing to work, but now, seeing how it actually works in practice, I'm quite disillusioned. If many new users feel like me, they are going to lose millions of people. For now, because I like the idea so much, I will give it a further chance, but I'm going to hold off on making strong contributions until I see whether there is a point or not. And that depends on whether this a a scheme or a social network/content site. So far, I only see the former. Which means that anything I post is just as well wasted posting on facebook as here. More so, because facebook will be around in a year's time.
Nothing stops you from posting it both places.
The above post netted $0.00, while idiot "hello world" posts garner $100 because the guy is a whale who knows a whale. Why would I bother wasting my time logging on to post for $0? If I wanted just to write something, other forums seem more useful.
Excellent write!