RE: Steemit... 'Is it Communist, Capitalist, or Maybe Both?'
This is absolutely some RED China / BLACK mirror shiza going on here in the Steemit world, no doubt about it in my mind. The only reason I support it and well,, love it is that it is totally voluntary. If I were forced to use the site by a communist government I'd be running for office to change that right quick. If we had to use or not use what this site has to offer it brings an entirely new and insidious element that I would want to fight to the death. I think when it comes to property right these spaces seem like common ground, the place where we take a flock to eat and shit but very few actually groom and maintain it. The analogy may be stretch but I really think it fits. Some folk will only keep to their corner and either work to make it pretty or productive and that can make them protective of things they don't really own. In most cases given the right amount of time, a common area will either turn into a dusty waste or a toxic dump, those that don't become private property in the end. Could be a false observation but its the one I got ;)
I feel you man and I love the black mirror analogy! I'm dumbstruck every day by how Steemit does not match the real world, ergo the title of this post. I'm still trying to figure it out for myself. How it should be looked at and whatnot. I'm told that Dan Larimer will have a constitution for EOS and maybe something like that, voluntaryism, will be good. People can go into it knowing what it is or knowing what is acceptable or not according to a common understanding. If they do not like the constitution they can simply choose to not purchase EOS stakes. However, when it comes to Steemit, there are just so many ways of looking at the platform. Whereas when a platform comes out with predefined parameters it just may end up putting a halt to all of the bickering, propaganda, and dogma.
to seek perfection, as lofty a goal as there is I'd say. Apotheothesis ,,,, spelled wrong perhaps lol,,,,,, but a beautiful concept non the less.
I read articles and comment before I read the rest of the group comments, I like to keep my 2 cents shiny :) but valued-customer has a good point.
I think we both fell right into the status quo paradigm and need to check out new angles for sure.
I love @valued-customers' analogies and I highly respect his opinions. However, I wonder whether or not in this case if he is correct?
If I were to for example put myself in the shoes of an investor with 100k to drop on SP. I would want to know how I could benefit from said investment.
If according to Steemit rules, I as an investor, could dictate relative to my investment a certain % of rewards then maybe investment would be merited.
However, if there were no benefits for me as an investor, I probably would not invest.
I would suggest that if you remove the capitalism element you remove the value from the SBD and if you remove the value from the SBD then we all suffer equally.
What say you?
Capital gains.
Since before history began, there have been both investors and profiteers. Investors seek to grow the entity they have invested in, so that it becomes worth more, and their investment therefore becomes worth more. Think BTC going from $1k in May 2017 to $20k in December 2017.
Profiteers, OTOH, seek to extract as much value from the entity as possible as quickly as possible. Think KKR and 'Barbarians at the Gate', or @haejin.
There's a Yuuuuuge difference.
I'm gonna defend free enterprise to the death. Capitalism is the enemy of free enterprise.
We've been handed definitions that aren't entirely true in our indoctrinations and the propaganda we are subjected to daily. Start from first principles and work your way through the fog of war that propaganda is.
People are what matter, at the beginning, and at the end.
I don't disagree with you, people most certainly are what matter. On the topic of people, I noticed you mentioned @haejin.
I think he gets a bad rap. He generates crypto charts and does a short analysis of them repeatedly, every single day like clockwork.
I think that there are many that don't understand his work and therefore they don't value it.
However, I try to look at what he does from his shoes.
I may not comprehend the meaning of the mathematical waves that he studies but I think that he may comprehend this stuff.
In fact, I've seen him on YouTube discuss these things. He's totally into it and very passionate about it.
The fact that he upvotes his own content to me it only means that he values himself and his work.
I know that is an unpopular viewpoint on steemit but I'm willing to say it.
I think if this place became unconducive for people like him he'd pull up stakes in the literal sense of the word and you'd see a dip in the value of SBD.
Granted, that would probably lead to people buying the dip, however, there would be much fewer people buying the dip if it were not profitable for them to do so.
While I don't follow @haejin, nor am an investor any longer, I have strongly defended him from the flags. I have stated repeatedly that I think his taking 5% of the rewards pool is great for Steemit, because if that doesn't force the whales to rethink their own strategy, nothing will.
Nonetheless, @haejin isn't taking the upvotes he gets from @ranchorelaxo and powering up, he cashes them out. That is not the strategy of an investor, but a profiteer, and why, and only why, I used him as an example.
When you talk about buying the dip, you are talking about capital gains, and that is an opposite strategy to what bidbots do. They aren't buying SBD, and they lease their Steem. Almost none of them are powering up, but are instead continually cashing out.
They aren't investors, but profiteers.
Hmm... I think that would be investors would only invest if they saw a profit to be made. Right now the way Steemit is coded it rewards the largest stakeholders with the power to divert where a larger percentage of the rewards will go.
Maybe Steemit got that right, or maybe they got it wrong? Maybe it's the reason that we are having this conversation. I say that because it seems like the carrot being waved in front of the donkey is the ability to capitalize off of one's Steem investment.
If you take that ability to capitalize out of play then it may no longer pay off to be a stakeholder in general and they, the profiteers or capitalists, however you look at it, they might simply dump all of their Steem back to the marketplace.
I've got a feeling if they tinkered with the code in such a way as to make everything fair with respect to the reward pool it would suddenly become an unattractive place for investors. It might end up causing the experiment to fail.
I do not know how right or wrong that theory is but maybe one day we will find out with one of these hard forks.
Earning steem, watching the graphs on how much it's worth, buying and selling on the exchanges, what could be more capitalist than that? I'm struggling in the system due to the communist reputation system but the money aspect is right up my alley. I don't mind working within a system where just about everyone can make it, seems to appeal to both sides of the coin atm. It's fun ride figuring it out for sure.