Is Steemit a community where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?
Hi, I'm new to steem, I guess like most of us here and I'm slowly starting to understand how it works.
There Is High Inflation of Steempower due to the reward system on voting. It seems we all benefit from that in a way since our steempower balance grows even if we don't vote. If we work hard writing good posts and upvoting the right ones we can earn even more. But I think the few people who own the majority of the shares have an unfair advantage because of their voting power.
Having a lot of steempower makes it much easier to grow your balance even faster doesn't it? So I guess proportionally, an account with a lot of steempower will grow faster than an account that doesn't have much (in terms of interest rate) unless the account with a lot of steempower doesn't vote or publish anything.
What this means is that the proportion of total shares would keep getting bigger for the big accounts and keep getting smaller for the small accounts.
Maybe I'm missing something here and please enlighten me if I am.
You are right with your presumption IMO.
My 2 cents: Platform is in its early days, and early adopters have lots of power, but that power makes harder for them to vote, they must wait and carefully vote on good content else it skyrockets from thier votes ( idk how that affects them, I believe they don't lose money if they wote and post doens't do good, since content they vote does good even more that part maybe needs some tuning and will be tuned with more users on platform), but I'm maybe wrong.
My conclusion is that this platform lets you earn money if your content is good (but not all good quality contens IMO gets big profit). With more users things will hopefully get better, and when those who are spaming see that its not woth it.
ATM people that earned money form bloging have better prospects to get even more money since everybody is watching thier post and upvote it momentarily after release.
With more users and quality on platform I hope system will work better thus rewarding more quality than ritch.
So far quality is the way to get you money, every day its gets better in that part. When I started few day ago you would get money for almost every post, i was shoceked when i saw this:
https://steemit.com/question/@juanmora/does-this-gives-you-money
but there are cartanly even better examples. If you were to post like today I believe you would get way less money, or none at all. For me its sign that thing are going up in terms of quality and justice, but this is computer inteligence world and their right or wrong is different from ours. For them ist just a matter of 0 or 1.
For inflation its absurde 100% a year if I understood corectly (I believe its even more if you count post rewards, but don't know to do math corecctly), pople invest their money in hype with bull and not on valid foundaitions.
This is big test and only time will show where we do end. I am happy to be part of it and it makes me happy to see it evolving from inside point.
I guess for the content publishers the system will eventually be fair as even new people will start getting noticed and followed if they post good content. My concern is more about voters and people who just hold a small amout of steempower as an investment.
Its like in real world its unfail but its just like it is, evolution will show where we end.
With those inflation rates on top accounts they only get richer, and we poorer as you mentioned. It same like in real world, if they act as some real world rich people and divide that wealth it would be better for all and its even question when to do it. Its never a good time for things like that, since majority of people would try to harvest profit. As i said this is experiment and only time will show, and for thoose that own majority of steempower (steem) lies great responsibility how it all evolves. For example
https://steemit.com/@craig-grant/
has bloged how he is steeming down, and puts money out of platform which he earned. Its his money he can do it legitimately with it what he wants and if I were to judge it would not be fair. craig-grant is straight and as far i saw honest fella, for me he is one of the true community pillars I used his profile becuse it is visible for me from his big activity to show how people think and in his place. I would probably do the same. But as said earlier only time will show and I'm happy to be involved in all of this so should you.
Actually I am pretty happy. I only wish I got to know steemit earlier.
But I'm a bit jealous you got 40 times more with your reply than I got with the post... Well I guess Dan likes you :)
I've put mine trust in your honesty while asking a question which everyone asked but people don't ask becuse they are scared maybe that they might get downvoted. I believe that you get some % of that money my replie will potentialy get. So far i have only posted replies believeing in peoples hearts (not only greed) and was mostly dissapointed. It takes 23 hours to payout and i don't believe (but hope) we both will prosper from it so that people that vote honestly will get paid. So far system is working but not so fair IMHO, but hopefully that will improve for better once new smarter and fairer algoritham is written (I know little about algorithams, but believe that people who invets their time in knowledge, thruth and love should prosper; yet algoritham knows little about those thing).
36 people up voted his and he got 2 buck 6 people up voted yours and you got 95 see what the problem is the rest of us kinda feel like bag holders because of the disparity. Im probably not going to buy steem and just sell what i already have because of how little the earning potential is unless you get a like from one of the big holders.
Its my first potential dollars on platform after about 50+ posts. I agree with what you said. But if you didn't know it takes 2 years for your SP to power down as far as i know. My mind created for me interesting blog where I look at powering down of powerhouses and its implications. Those are just theoretical ramblings but its on my mind now.
https://steemit.com/seemit/@leksimus/so-the-question-is-what-happens-if-powerhouse-with-1-000-000-sp-powers-down
Feel free to take a look.
very interesting definitely upvoted
Very often people put "income equality" above "income mobility". The authors reward is a meritocracy...is it just? No. Is it fair? Yes in my opinion.
The authors reward creates upward mobility for people who focus on providing value. Curations reward centralize power in order to incentivize the curator to do a good job and care for the long term viability of the project.
ALSO, if marketcap stayed stable, this would be a 0 sum game where value is constantly reshuffled among users.
I raised a similar question in my intro post yesterday, but then, a few seconds later, the #hack happened and steemit went into maintenance mode.
p. 20 of the whitepaper does seem to confirm your suspicion; it is expected to have a Zipfian wealth distribution, with a powerless majority and an untouchable elite minority. With all talk of "powering up" (accompanied by Goku screenshots from Dragon Ball), it would be interesting to see whether a "Spirit Bomb" is possible also: a move where all (lots of) Steemians lend their power to one single user to allow him to wrestle down whatever menacing force threatens to destroy the "world" (community).
As you, I am looking forward to more informed views on the matter. Some of the "whales" announced they would be powering down to level the field, so it seems there is some awareness of the problem.
I think this community has some good days ahead and if there is really a problem about this, let there be a solution.
Very interesting! I like it!
Update here :
https://steemit.com/steemit/@aaseb/steemit-is-a-community-where-rich-and-poor-have-a-chance-to-earn-update-to-is-steemit-a-community-where-the-rich-get-richer-and
if you criticize the network you willnot get very many upvotes :)
Don't get me wrong I like it! Also I'm not judging, if the founders and first investors found a good way to get rich, good for them. I'm just asking myself and the community a question. And I see you still voted, thanks :)
The more steem power , the higher the price goes the less coin the system have to payout.
Example
I have the fiat price of 300.00 thats 30 steem 10.00fiat (i know)
but what if the price of steem increase let say by 10 more dollars, now do I get 30 steem the next time I reach 300.00 fiat dolllar no because 300/20 is 15 steem. ( i hope this makes sense its 4:00 am here )
Ok if the price of steem increases we all benefit for sure.
I'm talking in terms of steems and steempower.
Will steem increase or decrease? that is another question
In a way, you're making the case for spending real money on buying some steem power right now - therefore becoming something of a 'whale' in Beta and building on that momentum.
It's more about whales who bought already I think it's already too late to grab a large share or it would be too pricy.
I'm betting that $100 spent now would still be a good investment. If the platform explodes, you might find it becomes worth a lot more than that and then makes your posts earn more each time. I'm giving it a go anyway.
I'll take the 100 if you're wrong but I wouldn't bet on it :)
haha... so you want a one way bet, where you win $100 if I'm wrong and you don't give me anything if I'm right? You're on! Er... I meant - I'll pass :-)
check out this post pretty much about the same subject :
https://steemit.com/steemit/@crypt0/steemit-whales-dolphins-and-minnows-the-importance-of-steem-power-on-steemit
Getting mixed up in the information I got here and there I was under the impression that your voting power was proportional to the square of your steampower which would be incredibly unfair for people who don't hold a lot.
Reading the whitepaper again I understand this applies to payouts, not to your voting power. Here is the formula
votes[x]² / sum(votes[0…n]²)