The social economy of Steem infrastructure

Anyone noticed quite a few 15 SP accounts voting? I am guessing that as price has been rising, there has been an increasing incentive to signup and start trying to mine some Steem through passive curation with the 15 Steem Steemit Inc provides. Unless one has thousands of those accounts, it is unlikely to amount to much in the short-term, but I guess if one can wait 5-15 years, it could be a significant amount.

Perhaps.

Not as much as actually participating though.

I have even seen a few disappeared faces coming back into the Steem social market over the last couple of weeks - I think they arrived a little early - I'd rather them wait til Steem is near the ATHs. As always, for those that do it, check your autovotes and consider if you still want to support those who have been dormant over the last year, because there are plenty of people who have been pushing hard all this time, regardless of price. If you want, consider adoption and seeing if you can help a few reds become minnows. Still, choose wisely though as not all are created equal.

Equality is a funny thing on Steem, people who create content all think it is equally deserving of reward because they put the effort into it. Like I was writing today about POSA (proof of social ability), there is more to Steem than the content and, it will continually grow to support the people behind the content. The future of Steem influencers is having a personality, not being able to write a school report.

Though, not every personality is going to get rewarded either as it has to be one that the community considers worthy of that support and for the most part, if you are an asshole you are unlikely to get a lot of people behind you unless you are simultaneously ofering something else alongside your personality. You could be an ass hole developer or an asshole with stake but, if just an asshole... you might be shit out of luck.

It is a funny world isn't it? People come into a magical internet land where value is created out of what is almost thin air and then complain because it is too hard to earn here. McDonald's is nearly always hiring, don't forget that.

I don't forget it either.

My wife and I cut back heavily on our expenses about 5 years ago so as to prepare for having a child and things were going well until the child came with a few complications that wiped our savings but, here we are -pulling through. Very soon I will have covered all of our immediate debts that stacked up by running the few jobs I have, and hopefully in a few months, my wife will start working after she graduates.

Once we are at zero though, our expenses are fashioned in a way that I will be able to cover our costs and a simple life by working a base salary job like at McDonald's. I worked that job 20 years ago as a crew trainer and, I could do it again if needs be. I know some people who choose not to find work because the work they can find they consider beneath them. What I consider beneath me is living off other people's goodwill or a government handout because I am unwilling or too unskilled to get a job.

There are times that goodwill and handouts are necessary for some people, but not at the rate that they are being consumed in this world. We have created a society that expects that no matter their participation, they should be cared for and protected. Is that the world in which you want to live? Who do you expect to cover your care?

I have been watching some of the people who are successful on Steem and I have to say, I work pretty hard at this but, there are many others who put in monumental efforts to be where they are. @coruscate comes to mind when it comes to a creator who puts a great deal of her energy into her content and, she does much more than that as she also heads up @steemonboarding alongside @anomadsoul. You see, even if she was an asshole (she isn't - she is sweet), she value adds to the community in other ways that extend past her content itself.

A lot of content creators don't recognize that when it comes to the Steem city ecosystem, there are many jobs to be done and most people do not have the skill or the drive to do the work. Like I was saying about the indirect Steem powered up and people engaging due to the words and behavior of influencers on the platform, the flow of resources goes beyond the boundaries of posts and draw on the reward pool. Some people don't like the idea of this but then, they are generally the ones that don't have the skills necessary to do the work and what I mean is, build the ecosystem.

Building Steem takes resources and those resources can come in various forms of creative power and while content creators are going to be increasingly valuable in the long term, infrastructure builders are valuable now as they create the tools that the creators will use later. But, the infrastructure builders are not just the developers either, they are also the relationship builders, community growers and Steem distributors that disperse Steem so that it can have be used more widely, even if at lower levels.

Steem is a massive and continually growing and morphing network of relationships of various kinds. Some of those relationships have value transfer between them as Steem, SBDs and vests and others have information and data travel between them. But, there are also the relationships that are not between accounts like the users who leverage the creations of the developers to post their content upon. Do you know who the devs are for @partiko, @busy or @steempeak? No? But you don't mind using the tools they created for you.

The Steem blockchain is more than a distributor of Steem alone, it distributes all kinds of resources across users in a whole range of ways that benefit people in a multitude of experiences and depending on the individual, the value of that experience can change enormously. While some people are only here for the Steem, others have found that there is more to earn than coins.

But, if one does want to earn some coins as well, the idea is that what one brings to the table is seen as valuable to someone who is already sitting at that table. You might think yourself the smartest in the room but, the social marketplace may beg to differ and that is the economy that is in play and always has been on Steem.

The more this place matures, the more valuable the understanding of it becomes.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]