How do you feel about Steem drying up as everyone powers up?
If the supply of Steem is limited....
And Steem power is part of that Steem supply...
It’s going to become harder and harder to power up.
I’m not complaining here, I know better now. I just want to share something that’s been on my mind since I got here and which has been popping up again now that Steem is starting to rise. Please feel free to correct me if I’ve miscalculated something.
Let me get back to what I was saying...
It’s going to be harder and harder to power up.
That’s not to say it will be very difficult to make money at Steem. All of us here right now will have a lot of Steem in comparison with all the new users coming in, and Steem could very well reach $100, meaning that even with 100 Steem power, you could potentially have an upvote worth more than x10 what it is now. That would put me at around a $4 upvote. Pretty cool, right? Most of us will likely make a whole lot of money from this platform.
So it’s all good, right?
Well, that depends on what you consider good. I hear a whole lot of bashing of “centralized” financial institutions, but are we really creating something truly different? A majority of bitcoin is held in the hands of a few whales. The situation at steemit is very similar.
Those who get on early will have been in the right place at the right time to have a lot of power...those who come later, will have to toil in order to have a tiny fraction of a chance at catching up to us. We may choose to throw them a bone, but even with good content, it will be unlikely for them to catch up with us. This is true for all cryptocurrency as far as I know. Early adopters are going to live like kings. For everyone else....it’s business as usual.
As exponentially powerful as all of us will be compared to the users who are new to steemit, the current whales and dolphins will also become exponentially more powerful than they are now and in comparison to the rest of us. That means it is unlikely that anyone will catch up to them unless they will it to be. Add to this the power of their massive upvotes which can be directed at anything they wish, and you have a system where a tiny minority has an unfathomable amount of power over the entire population of steemit.
How is this any different from the Centralized power structures with which so many of us are trying to escape?
Well, there are a few tiny differences, but the distribution of wealth is the same, it’s actually worse because the ability for whales to use their massive upvotes on themselves and their fellow whales, so that they’re ability to grow exponentially grows exponentially.
I know many whales here are good and decent people, perhaps many of them will act much more responsibly but...
Do we really want ANYONE wielding THAT much power?
Do we really want to play on that uneven a playing field?
At the very best, we will all be better off in this ecosystem then we were in our previous 9-5 jobs, as long as a few ultra whales will it to be. We’d better hope they don’t decide to use that power to push us around and limit our ability to succeed or that they don’t do anything to destroy the entire ecosystem, rendering our Steem worthless as they strategically move their massive funds elsewhere.
I don’t believe we should just shut up and be happy for our own gains. I believe we should be talking about this and searching for a more desireable future for all of us, where the word “decentralization” doesn’t just refer to the technology, but instead to the distribution of power.
I believe in decentralization of POWER, and we are not headed towards it, the way we are going now.
Still , I’m not giving up and I’m not going anywhere.
The world has entered a great transitioning into a future that we have yet to imagine. What that future looks like is up to all of us, as “value” is decided by us, collectively. We are right in the thick of it, here, at steemit.
Cryptocurrency, at the very least, brings this to our attention. A few years ago, thousands of bitcoin were worth a pizza. Now they are worth an estate. We are here at steemit deciding what has “value” and giving it that value through our upvotes, however small.
For the first time, I have a route towards the life that I’ve envisioned for myself, thanks to my experience at steemit and the opportunities of cryptocurrency. While I dont see crypto as the world we all dream of, the early stages of its growth have created a giant window for resources to shift. It’s exciting to be among you all and participating in this great experiment and trying to make better lives for ourselves, together.
The community is phenomenal. I’ve met so many incredible people and the potential for greatness is just overflowing from the relationships created here. It’s still a very exciting place to be. I don't bring this up to scare people from the platform or argue or complain. I bring it up because I believe there are great minds here who could come up with solutions and some with power who would be willing to listen and work out a solution.
If you feel there is a real problem here at steemit and in cypto and that it is recreating a world that looks too much like the world we are trying to retire, don’t throw in the towel or get depressed about it. Stay here and let’s work on a solution together. Eventually, through our efforts, more people will come to see that the answer does not lie in stronger technology alone but in stronger community, a willingness to help each other succeed, and a desire to support whatever benefits EVERYONE.
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Confessions of the Damaged - a collection of short stories
—-
by @skyleap
It will probably be like Bitcoin where people complain they bought a pizza for 20 btc ;)
The current SBD price helps a bit with distribution of SP and I hope that we will continue to support the smaller folks :)
High SBD does sure help a lot, but I do hope people start imagining what the platform will be like when much of the steem stops circulating....
I don't doubt that there will still be lots of great people supporting smaller folks. :-D
You voted to burn steem power rather than have it distributed through the system. Why?
Because I liked the idea. It is still distributed and removed from all the abusers on the platform, but not used for abuse itself.
Thank you for the response.
I applaud you for continuing this conversation.
My biggest disappointment with Steemit so far is that it seems to reflect what I thought I was leaving behind, i.e. just a few having masses of power/wealth.
I wrote yesterday that I wonder whether Steemit is destined to fail because it is the first of its kind and things rarely work well in the first iteration.
So your building a community around like-minded individuals is a great move because, if necessary we can all move on and create something better learning from what has been created here.
In the meantime I'm resisting the temptation to "throw in the towel and get depressed about it" and keeping on keeping on. Despite the face that my power is so little my comments frequently fail to post due to low bandwidth! Grrrrrrr!
It all comes back to ideology and beliefs. When I make a decent argument out of this, I'm usually met with "life doesn't work that way", but this is always based on an individuals personal experience and understand of life. "Human nature blah blah blah" as if we can really understand human nature from our limited perspective and limited history. People like to use history to understand the present and predict the future, but we often fail to see that our assumptions are also created by that history, some of which may not serve us.
We are moving in the right direction here, because at the moment, our ideas about money and "wealth" are being challenged which can't be a bad thing. We've also gathered a huge bunch of RELATIVELY open minded people in one place and (perhaps thanks to monetary incentives but whatever), they're all being relatively civil (with a few exceptions). I think we have a chance to create something great. Whether it manifests here or elsewhere is not really important, but if we can reach a greater consensus within our communities on steemit, it may have a chance to fix some of it's issues.
I personally think we will always run into these problems as long as we are attached to our capitalistic tendancies but I'm willing to listen to anyone who is willing to listen.
Don't throw in the towel!
"I personally think we will always run into these problems as long as we are attached to our capitalistic tendancies". I agree.
It is hard to shake ourselves free from our personal and collective histories.
Steemit is like a live mini experiment into human nature when power and money are involved and a real "in my face" experience for where my personal preferences and insecurities lie. It's not always pretty but for the most part it is fascinating and fun.
Steemit.com was a breakthrough, even in the cryptoshphere. It has been in beta since launched, and there seems to be very little momentum to go beyond beta. There does not seem to be any will to fix the problems, as the people who got involved first benefit from the problems. My strategy is ride this as far as it will go, but keep an eye out on the people who see the potential here, see the problems here, and go make a better platform. I DO think that will happen if there is no effort made to polish steemit.com into the gem it could be.
Yeah, that makes sense. I use steemit.com on my phone and may not see the issues. It seems to work well. We haven't been on this type of media site before so it seems great. I hope it lasts. We have experienced nothing but positive and uplifting interactions! I would hate for that to change.
Steemitcleaners acused me of "tag abuse" and "spam" when I was still VERY new, and it just crushed me. I did not know they were running BOTS who had decided I was raping the reward pool with my post that got less than a quarter... The HUMAN interactions have been almost entirely wonderful, save one self righteous vegan but that is just life... lol! The bots nearly ran me off. I mute every account that I find out runs bots now. I am here for the people... like YOU!
Nice! The people are great. I don't have much experience with bots. I was advised to not post more than 4 times in a day. Makes sense. Since we have started seeing our world as content there are so many ideas! If I post more than once in a day I try to use different tags. I could especially make more videos haha.
OK, you are making an assumption that I did something bad, I did not. I was NOT spamming, I was NOT abusing tags. If a human had read the post, it would have never happened. A bot followed an algorithm and decided to make a nasty comment to me. A bot with a rep score of over 70, I thought my account was DONE.
Whoa....no assumptions😀at all....and I completely agree. A bot like that could have ended roughly.
Yeah, I am still touchy... Bots with vote power and that kind of ability to ruin accounts are the boogey man here. Everyone fears the "angry whale" but then acts like there is nothing we can do except tiptoe around and try to avoid their wrath. Not really the epitome of "free speech" that way...
<3 We are really thinking the same way. I would like it if steemit could change to fix these issues, but I'm also ready to move my focus somewhere else if something based more in equality and more community oriented comes around.
@whatamidoing & @freedompoint Don't you think when people with a lot of steem(whale size) power now are going to cash in(power down) their Steem power for dollars once the market price of steem goes toward the 100$ as you mentioned earlier? I really like your poin of view, though, and I hope it is going to be fixed. But I honestly think once you reach some kind of saturation point that whales will power down and new honest content creators rise higher, besides a whale who has shit content can only be at the top for so long.
If that's what they choose to do, sure, some steem will go back into the wild. But they can continue to cash out their sbd gains from posting and curation (maybe even self voting) and keep their massive power and influence.
And who is to stop some outside agent (let's say an account run by facebook) to buy a ton of steem and start using it in ways that are counter productive to the community. I don't see how its safe, fair or sustainable in the long run to have such a disparity in the distribution of wealth.
I do think there are whales who will work to push things in the direction you say, but the problem is systematic and cultural, not personal.
I agree to the fact that minority have a majority voting power and they throw a bone every now and then.
And it's becoming harder and harder to get steem on payouts. Previously when I started, it was 50/50
Now the balance is uneven. I rationalized that as the higher price of steem compared to SBD, but now they are pretty equal. And I still get higher SBD than steem on payouts.
I guess we have to stick it out in these times. Decentralization of power isn't happened yet, but I'm hoping it'll get there.
The 50/50 is computed on the 7 day average price of steem and SBD. There are several articles on it. Read some witness reports, this is one of the key aspects of those reports.
The whole structure isn't going to lead to any kind of decentralization of power but the collection of individuals here may be able to work something out, either here or somewhere else. I'm trying to build a community that will move beyond steem if it has to.
When you get 50/50 rewards it gives you half in Sbd (and it assumes they are worth $1 no matter what the market price is. That's why it's so nice when Sbd are more than $1 because we still get the same amount on our posts but then we can sell it for more) and half in steem (based on the market price of steem) so you will only get the same amount of each if the price of steem is $1. Hopefully that makes a little sense. This post explains it in more detail. https://steemit.com/steem/@littlejoeward/could-a-high-steem-price-actually-be-bad-for-us
Great post. I can see what you are going for. There is the idea that certain people are gaining incredible power, but they didn't take it they were given it. I mean that we vote. When we vote it gives them steem, and is followed by the opportunity to power up. At some point we are going to have to trust that we didn't waste our votes and the ones with the power ultimately want the good for the blockchain, deligating and involvement. Right? 🙃
How they attained the power isn't totally irrelevant to the conversation, of course I feel better if they "earned" it through some contribution. But regardless of HOW, the question I would like to raise is "Is it really ok for anyone to have THAT much power?" You have to think, they're power is only going to grow EXPONENTIALLY as time goes by, which will create a wider and wider gap between whales and regular people. So while they may be good people, deserving of some reward, they will essentially become kings and queens of steemit for being the first to create quality content or investing in the platform, or perhaps even something less valuable to the platform. If 10 people were to end up with 99% of the wealth how would you feel about it?
I believe there is a lot of good here. I don't bring this up to scare people from the platform or argue or complain. I bring it up because I believe there are minds here who could come up with great solutions and some with power who would be willing to listen.
Oh yeah! I don't view it as scary or alarming. It is a good post with a great point. What would I think if 10 people had 99%...well noy to be too cheeky, but I live in america and that is pretty much how it is 🙃. I can see what you mean. Do you think there is a way to change the course before it happens? Or is it already in motion?
It’s already in motion, but it seems there are enough people trying to spread the rewards so that it won’t happen as fast as it could. At least we have that.
I can't wait to see how it goes. I know each day I get up and jump in. No matter what, Life is good.
I think it’s totally normal for early adopter of a revolutionary technology to end up being the ones who benefits the most.
Right timing also has value and that need to be taken into account when measuring the value each user receive back.
What happens if 100 individuals have 99.9% of the wealth because they had the right timing? I don't believe this is out of the realm of possibility.
In that case that project would probably ended up failing. If a project doesn’t serve its community it will fail. That’s what I think.
We will see how long we can keep it up. I believe that if it really becomes a problem, the witnesses will do what they can to fix the problem.
Even if it does fail in the end, why not stick around, make lots of friends, share ideas and get paid while it lasts :-)
For now I cannot fully comprehend! But yes newbies like me have difficulties coping up with big sharks. Well at least we enjoy expressing our feelings. And I enjoy the journey in here. It's nice to be part of steemit family. Thinking there is a pay from the post that we are sharing. It is still a good concept. Anyways, learning from you.
Stick around and it’ll all be clear. The good and the bad... We can only try to make it better!
Someday it will all be sensible, thanks for this post. Slowly learning from here...☺️🤗
The problem with this logic is the Praeto Principal.
20% of the people make 80% of the stuff.
And thus, from any starting position, unless there are serious hindrances, all platforms will look like this.
And, if we limit this top 20%, we lose the 80% that they create.
So, the remain 80% have to deal with only having one fifth of what they had.
Every platform that tries to work on equality fails. Because life just doesn't function that way.
If everything in life follows this principal to a T, I suppose we have nothing to worry about....I don't really buy that though. An observable pattern does not equal a universal truth.
Pardon? The Praeto Principal is an observation, not a thing people strive for.
Like 20% of professors publish 80% of the papers.
That's what I mean by observable pattern, it doesn't mean everything neccesarily fits it.
Do agree with you. Less then 100 accounts control the greatest share of power and reap the benefits of gaining most the value of the daily rewards pool. Being early was key. Those that have the ability to fix are also the ones that mostly benefit from the distribution of rewards as they are now. Do wonder how it will look at the end of the year and moving forward.
I think 2018 will be a great year for all of us here....after that the consequences of the undistributed wealth may come to bite the platform back in the ass, but who knows with SMTs coming.
Interesting perspective. I never really thought about it that completely before. Obviously, I've seen this in action but never really compared it to the status quo.