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RE: Self voting will now NOT be default steemit.com behaviour
The ability to self-vote absolutely adds value to the system. Specifically, it makes the Steem token more valuable. People want to own the token, and will pay good money for it, in part because they can self-vote their content and thereby gain more influence and a larger voice within the Steem community. Steem was never meant to be "fair". Rather it was meant to reward holders of SP with INFLUENCE, thereby increasing demand for Steem and raising its market value. Deny SP holders this influence and all you will do is diminish the desirability and value of the Steem token itself. That's short sighted.
Yes, SP designed to reward holders with influence, and for their investment to appreciate over time. But this appreciation comes at the cost of the other purpose of Steem which you have not mentioned - distributing rewards to other members, not yourself. Every token that someone allocates to themselves is necessarily not allocated socially. Steem is not simply an interest deposit where you can post any old thing and self vote to get your "dues".
Increasing the value of the Steem token is not a simple cause and effect, it's complex. There are a lot of people bringing up the concern that self voting is in fact scammy behavior and this might actually go against adoption and the value of the coin.
Nobody is proposing to deny SP holders influence, it's pretty much gospel here. But letting their influence increase too much is not the goal either.
@sean-king You're so unbelievably wrong. Buying STEEM makes the token more valuable. Having SP gives you the ability to earn curation rewards. That's how the platform was intended. It was intended to be fair, as in that everyone would be making money.
If you are self-voting, everyone is making less money and it becomes less "fair". The more people self-vote, the less people will earn, until everybody is earning hardly anything and the price of STEEM will drop like there's no tomorrow. It's as simple as that.
And why do you think people buy Steem, friend? Just so that they can upvote OTHER PEOPLE'S stuff with more influence? NO! They often buy Steem because owning Steem ensures that their own content gets more exposure.
Steem was NEVER intended to be "fair" (read the whitepaper since it's quite explicit on this point, analogizing Steem to a "lottery"), and it most DEFINITELY wasn't intended to be a place where "everyone would be making money." Again, read the whitepaper! Steem can't afford to produce enough tokens to reward everybody "fairly". If it did, the system would be flooded with tokens, and those tokens would be relatively worthless. Instead, Steem was designed to pay huge, outsized rewards to a few lucky people. And it's the HOPE of earning one of those outsized rewards (and not a "fair" distribution of those rewards) that keeps people posting, just like the HOPE of winning the lottery (and not a "fair" distribution of winnings) keeps people buying tickets. Again, read the freakin whitepaper.
People acquire Steem in part so that they CAN upvote themselves and get more exposure, just like advertisers acquire air time so that they can likewise get more exposure. Airtime is limited and desired because it gives influence, and STeem is limited and desired becasue it gives influence. Therefore airtime is valuable and Steem is valuable.
Imagine a system where people who purchased airtime could ONLY advertise OTHER PEOPLE'S products and not their own. Would airtime be as valuable as now? Of course not. The value of airtime would decline greatly b/c people are not all that altruistic. They are not going to spend their hard-earned money only to provide exposure for someone else.
This is not even a hard question, man. It's really quite simple. Depriving Steem holders of the right to self vote is the equivalent of depriving purchasers of advertising the right to advertise their own products. It's insane, and it will kill the price of Steem.
Agreed
+1
totally
That's a good point, I hear you.
I feel the need for it to be more openly discussed, this is good.
I'm mearly expressing my view in my previous post, but my view may change as I discuss this topic. Nothing is fixed.
Thanks for your view of it, I need to think on this more 😀
I agree with you. I hope you and I are both wrong. :)