Steemit's Inability To Find A Delicate Balance

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I think a lot of what Steemit problem(s) are is that being a new, developing technology they haven't figured out a way to create a balanced ecosystem. A few weeks back I wrote a post on my aquarium becoming infested with an invasive species after I unsuspectingly bought a snail species I didn't know was an or could be an invasive species. It was a two year long battle that in the end I ended up throwing everything out except the fish and starting over. In that whole process I got rid of the invasive species but I lost two giant algae eaters in the process because there wasn't enough algae to sustain them. When I tried to introduce a couple more algae eaters into the tank they got eaten by the bigger fish. So now I have a whole new problem of uncontrolled algae growth unless I can find algae eaters as big as the fish currently there. Basically trying to control one problem created another.

I pretty much see Steemit operating the same way. They have to many invasive species and big fish that they can't leverage a underlying ecosystem needed to support the system overall. Without that underlying support system you just can't create a healthy operating system. To create that delicate system going in and dredging out the bottom isn't going to help, it's just going to create a system that can't balance itself and flourish.

The way this is done outside in the real world involves a fish, fishermen and an environmental protection agency. People fish for a variety of different species that helps balance the system outside of how the system operates to balance itself. In the overall scheme of things it keeps any one type of species from overrunning another. When an invasive species becomes involved this is more than what the system or a fisherman can resolve so experts are brought in. How can Steemit operate more like a true ecosystem?

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First everyone has to come to the consensus that every fish is vital to the system. From the well educated producers to the uneducated bottom feeders. You have to come to the rationalization that the world is made up of producers and consumers and if everyone was busy producing and no one was consuming things wouldn't turn out quite so well. That's where I see Steemit at right now, they think they can succeed with producers just supporting producers...and that isn't going to work out so well. They think they can do this by using curation trails or tribes but what ends up happening is no one is really consuming the product they are just supporting the product regardless if it's good or it becomes to expensive to maintain. It's laid out on a best laid plan scenario, a trust that everyone is going to act in good behavior and what's in the best interest of the platform just because they may do so more often then not. When you don't consume the product you are voting for there's a good chance you are upvoting content for fifty, hundred bucks that isn't worth the paper it's written on. When people see that they lose trust in you and your word that your actions are based on what's best. On a platform where your words are your most valuable asset you should never leave that to chance for very few people operate with the integrity of tarazkp or denmark guy to name a couple. That's why consumers are important, they may not be the best producers but they make great consumers. How you reach a delicate balance in that is by determining if they are making a reasonable reward for the post they offer and are they using restraint in the amount of times they post combined with how much interaction they provide to other producers. If someone is producing a small amount of content for a quarter or less but spending a considerable amount of time interacting with others that a excellent rate of return on that quarter. I see a lot of these people running around on here, most I see a post a day, maybe even as less as three, four times a week but I see them adding value all over this platform in their responses to other producers. These people shouldn't be punished for the faults of bad actors. This is where fisherman come into play, if I see these people I know others see these people, they also know the value they bring. They can decipher the good from the bad, the people on here posting repeatedly just for the reward without regard to interaction to others or asking to much in return for what little value they brought. The downvote system is a good way to deal with them. What else can help is site owners police their sites. Stop upvoting, resteeming bad content, monitor your site, if the information provided ends up being false or debunked take the upvote away.

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To get rid of invasive species there's only one real way to do it. Nuke them off the site. We all know the blockchain mantra of no censorship and decentralization has long gone down the tubes. What is needed is an environmental protection agency that gathers together to get a nuke option available/hardfolked in. There's just no other way to create a healthy balanced ecosystem if the only option you have is to nuke the whole bottom layer, you will never flourish and grow a platform like that. You really do need to value the person incapable of the talents like tarazkp whose post seeks small monetary gain but whose interactions and ability to communicate with others far outweighs the pennies paid, it's like being given gold in exchange for copper, there's just not many deals to be had like that.

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Yep. This decision to use a hard fork to help the whales get fatter and make the minnows skinnier has me wondering how anyone thinks that will help in the long run. I am going to see if I can do a little better as a "curator" but not by actually reading shit whales post, just by putting them on my autovoter. My personal feed, where I see the posts from people I actually have an interest in, no one is making that $20 cut off. I take that back, coff33a has a post worth $25, but he is the only one on my entire feed, several days back. In other words, all the ACTUAL humans I have come to "know" here are getting screwed....

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People with any real money in this world didn't get it by blindly hoping aboard a ship in uncharted waters. They take a good hard look first, wade around a bit first. I hardly doubt they'll miss the fact it's a system stacked against itself. I just don't see how they think that will attract new investors let alone those who like to participate on a social media level....like you said "the ACTUAL humans" here.

I don't know what you mean by the twenty dollar cut off as Justineh replied back to a comment of mine saying it's wasn't correct that people would have to have a post worth three dollars to earn from it, what have you seen on the twenty dollar cut off?

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I saw it in this post:
https://steemit.com/hf21/@steemitblog/hardfork-21-survival-guide
I cannot get the article to load now... Well, it loads, then it crashes. If you can read it fast enough, it is down under the heading "rewards."

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That would be based on if one steem was worth one dollar. Here's what justineh said:

The curve does not mean that you have to make $3 or more to receive those rewards. It means with the new curve rewards will look different than they are now, and posts under that amount with decrease slightly compared to what they are now.. that does not mean they will go to zero.

The 16 STEEM number is where it’s equal to where it is now (linear). As you can see by the chart, it decreases from there. At 1 STEEM ( 18cents) the decrease is less than 40%.

So, even under that level, individuals will still see rewards. Plus overtime it should actually increase compared to what it is now (if all the aspects work as intended).

I hope that helps

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I know that reply isn't going to make many people feel better, forty percent less of 18 cent steem I guess is better than not getting the other sixty percent....must definitely be a glass half full or glass half empty thinking....lmao.

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Those damned parenthetical comments, they look so innocent... "(if all the aspects work as intended)." I am seeing roughly a 66% decrease, based on my VERY limited set of data points. Is that working as intended? Although this post is doing far better than that, due mostly to one phat upvote from someone I was talking to on another thread. I think that can be called
"one off." Ah well, it is what it is. No chemtrails for several days, I am going to go bask in that. Have a lovely day!

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An interesting view you describe. Such and similar thoughts circulate here and I also deal with them...

I think what's causing a lot of confusion is the lack of definition of what Steemit actually is. Personally, I find that fascinating, but it can also have a very unsettling to annoying effect. The question of decentralisation ... If the buzzword picks up speed, you might think it means that the source code is open and therefore the users are a mix of developers and producers who give feedback on what better features on the blogger side and what additional applications on the developer side want to be seen. That it's about a product for the general public that is created with and by the general public. In this respect, earning money for blogging/networking would have been a very nice side effect and not the reason to be here in the first place.

Such striving in the form of creating wealth to use for the good of many could be a definition of Steemit.

But there is a distribution war raging here, in which basically everyone can easily become the victim of oneself. A system that concentrates too much on the distribution agenda loses its creative power.

If, for example, Wikipedia had started with the same concept that authors are paid for their entries, we probably wouldn't even have Wikipedia. The authors and the technicians would probably not have found a good basis to cooperate with each other. I think the beginning of Wikipedia was the joy and fascination that the Internet offers an opportunity to create such a database and that competition would have been a hindrance. Also facebook would probably not have been created, if the registrants would have aimed at a payment. Already the free registration and a completely unregulated form of social media has caused various problems and the face of todays social media and learned behavior was strongly influenced by facebook. The other day I was talking to someone here and he said it might even be best to pay a fee for a registration and I am inclined to agree with him. Not sure, though ...

The whole issue is complex and basically conflicts take place because there is a claim to definition sovereignty. However, for true decentralization, Steemit Inc itself would have to be interested in flattening its central position and trusting the potential of the community. I suspect that this is right now not possible here. Too much scorched earth. Dealing with freedom ... it requires a mature society to a greater extent. Whether this will take shape, where people fundamentally prefer the common good to their own welfare, is an open question.

I am a social worker and advise people from different backgrounds, most of whom have small incomes that go to the limit of their livelihood. However, we can live with this very well here in Germany, because we have a high social money budget.

Irritatingly, however, despite this high level of social security, people are afraid, dissatisfied and lament a lot. I always reassure them and say: nothing can really happen to you, you will be cared for by the community and you will have food and a roof over your head. That helps. But I encounter this phenomenon time and time again and it has to do with dissatisfaction with money distribution. This dissatisfaction about the distribution of money is an insanely high distraction and turns people into consumers instead of creators. But consuming alone doesn't feed the creative part of humans.

Basically, people don't need much money. Especially not in societies as rich as mine. I have been testing for many years to live with very little money. But this is a much more detailed topic. I've already written too much anyway.

I dare to give you this much of a comment because something with your writing tells me you might understand what I was up to :)

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