RE: The Dwin fallacy(In defense of the flag part II)
Great post. A couple thoughts:
My biggest issue with downvoting posts just because you subjectively think they are overvalued is that it lessens the "lottery" effect of the steem platform, and it's the lottery effect that actually encourages people to invest in building the steem platform. Here's what I mean:
Imagine a world where the author rewards were simply evenly distributed among all authors posting over a given period. Being divided among so many people, they wouldn't amount to much for any one author. And, authors wouldn't therefore be incentivized to invest in creating great content because they know it would never pay off.
By contrast, when aspiring authors see other authors occasionally earn "outsized rewards"--that is, an award that is hugely profitable to the author, meaning that the author earned far more than is "reasonable" given the amount of effort put into the post--aspiring authors are encouraged (1) to post reasonably often (essentially buying more lottery tickets), thereby adding value to the system, and (2) to post stuff of reasonable or excellent quality (since crap post's like just posting "boobs" will never win outsized rewards), thereby adding value to the system.
Now, suppose that someone makes a makeup tutorial of excellent quality and it earns $25k worth of steem. Despite it being of good quality, few people in their right mind think such a post is objectively worth $25k. So, many of them start downvoting it until its worth only, say, $250. Because the downvoters don't get to decide who gets the steem that is reallocated by virtue of the downvote, downvoters are essentially then always just downvoting to more evenly distribute the coins. That is, they are downvoting simply prevent the bunching of reewards among only a few posts.
But again, it's exactly this bunching that creates the lottery effect that incentivizes the desired behavior from other aspiring authors. Undermining this lottery effect lessons the incentive and, taken to an extreme, could kill it altogether.
So, I like the downvote, but I'm currently among those who think it should only be used very selectively and judiciously and not just becasue one believes that a given post is "overvalued."
Just my two cents. Again, great post.
How is the lottery working out? IMO, the best argument against the "lottery" system is that we've been doing it this long and hemorrhaging users.
Basically, there are two models I could see attracting people to steemit.
And we can't do both, because to pay for the lottery payouts, we have to use a ton of the reward pool.
I get spam all the time offering me a chance to win a free gift card for taking a survey or something. Im sure you do too. Do you take the survey? I bet no. Because lotteries are stupid. And most people think lotteries are stupid. And the ones who don't know it are probably not the people we want producing our content.
Also, even if its true that a more expensive ticket, a post with more thought and effort put into it, is more likely to win, I don't think most people will believe its true.
Also, even if the lottery isnt fixed, this one will definitely seem fixed to anyone who watches for even a short time... because its always the same people who win. Oh theres sweetssj eating noodles with Ned, and its at the top of trending. Wow shes so lucky.
As someone whos been on both sides of the gambling industry for years, i can tell you that people usually tend to think the game is rigged when they lose even when its provably and obviously not. In our system, in some ways you would argue that it is rigged for some users. I just don't think its very attractive as a lottery.
Well, judging by the price of Steem, I think the lottery is working out pretty well so far. Steem has gone from being worth nothing less than nine months ago to being valued at over $36 MILLION today. Not bad for a shoe-string budget startup that's just getting started.
Gambling is a yuge multi-billion dollar industry. Lotteries, a subset of gambling, raise billions and billions each year. So, clearly gambling has appeal to lots of people. They are willing to invest yuge amounts of time and money in pursuit of a big payoff.
To say that gamblers are "stupid" for gambling may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant nonetheles. And to suggest that gamblers are too stupid to produce good content is a non sequitur. The biggest gamblers in Vegas are some of the most successful, creative and brilliant people you'll ever meet.
Why do you think you get all that survey spam in your inbox? Because it doesn't work for the spammer? No, because it DOES.
In theory, I'm not opposed to your option number 2 above. I simply suggest that it won't work in practice. The money will get spread too thin to serve as a continuing incentive to authors. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
In any event, subjective downvoting based purely upon one's opinion that a given post doesn't "deserve" the currently advertised reward simply ensures that no posts will be worth much at all. It will not only discourage authors, but it will actually piss them off to get downvoted. That's not a great way to attract talent.
Imagine a scenario where the salaries of football players was determined by fans using a system like steem rewards. You might think that player "X" deserves $50 million a year, but how many others are gong to think that? And, in particular, how many others who favor players on OTHER TEAMS are going to think that? They will simply downvote your guy hoping that more money then gets reallocated to their favored player. And...you'd do the same. In the end, you'd have a situation where salaries were much more egalitarian but you'd also have a situation where tremendously talented football players might instead choose to play some other sport without such a silly system. Or...another league might be formed where comp was truly determined by market forces or player popularity rather than people trying to game the system with votes.
If youre going to judge the lottery effectiveness by the steem marketcap, you have to use when the lottery first started paying as a starting point.
jul4, when they first started paying out, the market cap was 13 million. It took less than 5 days to get to the mid 30s, where we are at now. For most of the time we have had the "lottery" going, it has been declining.
Im all about being positive, but if youre looking for an unbiased price metric to guage the effectiveness of a particular strategy starting from day one block one can't work. It started out worth nothing. Now, its worth more than nothing. The plan works!
That said, there are other factors that effect price. I think the best way to guage the effectiveness of a lottery system to attract new content is to look at user growth and the change in the daily number of posts. those numbers tell a troubling story.
I didn't say that gamblers are stupid. I said that lottery players are stupid. The lottery is what us gambling types call a sucker bet.
It is a fallacy to compare economic events at two points in time. You must compare what is to what could have been. Unfortunately, it is difficult to measure what could have been.