If I was going to get a doctorate in something dealing with economics I think I would choose my thesis studying the history of Steemit rewards. I think it would be an amazing case study on if you put a pile of money in a room and then ask people to distribute evenly, how that would play out.

Hard Work = Success

If I've learned anything from reading the book the book Outliers it's that successful people aren't lucky, but have put in more work than anyone else.

The book takes a look at the Beatles and talks about the hours of live performances they did before they became successful, how Bill Gates probably had the most hours programming a computer when they first came out in the world.

Source

I've seen the same thing here on Steem that those that work the hardest are usually the ones that are the highest rewarded. Some are rewarded more than others for hard work, as it's hard for everyone to understand how long it takes to write one type of post vs another.

For instance, writing this post has taken very little preparation, so it's mostly the time to write the post, however, if I write a review on a book, I have to spend all that time reading the book before I even write the first word of my book review post.

Basically nothing in life is perfect, but you'll never be as successful as someone who is putting in more time and effort than you.

Sometimes It Is All About Who You Know

I think there are 2 aspects that fall into this category. One is if you happen to have a friend that's a whale or has more SteemPower than you helping motivate you to join and stay on the platform.

These people have an "unfair" leg up and can get away with creating "less valuable" content or posting less and still getting ahead of those that work harder. This is just the way life works sometimes.

Source

Sometimes you can find people who will help you if you help them regardless of the value of you or him create. As long as everyone in the circle benefits they will continue to "throw business" to eachother.

Once again none of this is necessarily bad as it's nice to get a head start every once in a while, but if the quality of said work declines it's only a matter of time before they get found out and the pay disappears, or you know some powerful enough this doesn't matter.

Control is Weak

It's interesting how the change that happened with the most recent hard fork has almost completely done away with bid bots.

While there are still some people that "milk" the reward pool, it's better to decentivize such action instead of trying to make rules against it.

I think there are plenty of improvements and projects that will continue to incentivize good behavior to the point, while nothing will ever be perfect, that more and more people that put in hard work will be rewarded more than they were before.

It would be interesting to see some sort of vote decay system put in for those who vote on the same authors over and over again. For instance, every time you vote on someone's post in the same 7 day period your vote is less effective, or they make voting power you can use is reduced by 10% each time.

What's some crazy ideas that you have or have had that could make Steem better in your opinion?