Misbehaving A Steemit Story

Imagine, if you will, Spring 1970. I’m sitting in a classroom trying to decide if I can improve my chances on the baseball team by switch hitting and whether or not Sweet Bonnie Brown would actually go out with me. The professor is desperately trying to explain the nuances of Keynesian Economics. Much to my dismay.

Fast forward to Spring 2017. I am caught in a time warp with way too much time on my hands. I decide to read Nate Silver’s “The Signal and the Noise”, a missive about predictions and why they are so often wrong. I liked it, to the point of making some notes and noodling some ideas.

The very next book in my stack is “Misbehaving” by Richard Thaler. It’s Thaler’s life story of banging his head against the wall that is modern Economics.

Nate Silver had plainly said that Economists and Economic Forecasts were the absolute worst, and proved his point with numbers. Thaler offered a clear cut reason for the abysmal failure rate of economists.

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What could any of this have to do with Steemit?

John Maynard Keynes was a British Economist that changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics during the 1930s. His disciples have carried on and expanded the theory until it is sometimes thought of as fact.

Keynesian economics makes some assumptions and has some rules for it’s implementation. One of Thaler’s arguments is with the Keynes’ assertion that ‘the majority of people will act in their best interest in all economic situations’.

Richard Thaler is a classically trained economist that turned to psychology and cognitive science to explain and understand why individuals didn’t follow Keynes’ rules. He shows, with a lot of empirical data, that individuals don’t necessarily act in their best interests all the time. His field of study and practice is known loosely as ‘behavioral economics’.

Nate Silver shows very clearly that Economic predictions are almost universally awful, and in fact, are much worse than weather forecasts. How can that be?

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Real Life Examples

50-50% or 100% vote split?

Talk about a topic that has been discussed and posited in great numbers. Every single ‘Newbie’ guide will at least touch on this topic. Simple mathematics proves that it is much better to take the 50% option in almost every case. Yet still we see lots of people choose the 100% option. It’s simple greed. In lots of cases you simply can not convince people that 50% of a pool is better for them than 100% of a portion of that pool.

This is the primary case I can cite for the Thaler school of economics. It is easy math, it has been explained ad nauseum and it still occurs. Individuals simply will not act in their own self interest in a certain fraction of the general population, which skews any possibility of accurate predictions. I would submit that predictions involving the author reward pool are simply impossible as long as a significant percentage chooses against their best interest.

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Whale Wars

This one is a lot harder to quantify, and calls for some speculation. Part of that speculation involves short term, mid term and long term predictions.

Short term has some possibility. There are definitely rewards for the specific post or comment. Then there is ‘personal satisfaction’. The “I’ll show you” mentality that sees only in the moment. The possibility exists in these cases that the vast majority simply thinks less of all whales. Boorish behavior at the very best, harmful at it’s worst. It reflects poorly on the individual and the group.

We have a group of people that think all the whales stink. Instead of being the object of admiration for their obvious contributions to Steemit and Steem they are derided. In the long term this is a harmful opinion for all of us. We all need the capital and risk taking that the whales have brought to this platform and the blockchain if we want to see growth and expansion. Derision won’t push that forward a single bit.

Flag Wars

We’ve all seen it. Individuals flagging other individuals every time they post or comment. I can not, for the life of me, see how this will ever boost the group or the individual. If the whole group and the individuals share the same goals and ambitions this is simply foolish. No gain and potential loss for everyone.

Which is not to say that flagging a post or comment is a bad thing. If the post or comment is beyond the rules or propriety it should be flagged. It is really the only weapon we have to combat bad behavior.

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Plagiarism

Call it whatever you want. Copy Pasta. Plagiarism. Pretending you wrote something. It’s all the same thing, theft. It is a pestilence on our platform and it really needs to go away. It becomes a huge drain on the available money for all of us. Further, it is just bad behavior.

How does it take money from you and me? By people upvoting it. You’ve seen it, an obviously stolen photo posted with a number of votes, generally from multiple accounts. It’s just theft of services. There are a number of individuals that not only do not operate in their best interest, but contrary to the best interest of the whole platform.

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If Steemit and Steem are to become predictable and grow these problems are going to have to be dealt with. Predictability is absolutely a key to being able to present ourselves to the general public in a favorable light. Presenting ourselves in a favorable light is the key to the huge growth we all want to see.

I think Thaler and Keynes could absolutely agree on one thing: If we don’t clean up our own house we can’t build on it at all. What a shame for us all.

Nate Silver owns the wildly successful website FiveThirtyEight which uses hard numbers to make predictions on everything from Sports Scores to Presidential Elections. If you are a numbers geek, or have an interest in how predictions are made and the errors involved I heavily recommend “The Signal and the Noise”. Available anywhere that books are sold.

Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize for Economics in October, 2017. His book “Misbehaving” is a very readable autobiographical look at the practice of Economics over the last 50 years. He is a distinguished professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Post Addendum! Split prices and which makes more.

Backstory: I actually wrote this post in March 2018. The reason I didn't publish it then is complicated, but it is what it is. I recently saw it, read it, liked it (a lot) and decided to publish now.

When I wrote this the 50-50 option made more money for the author because the price of SBD was over $1.00 USD. Now with the price of SBD under $1.00 USD the option makes no difference except it pays no SBD at 100% and a very teeny slice at 50%.

So it is simply a matter of personal choice at this point. You might wish to remember if (errrr when) the price of SBD is over $1.00 USD.

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