A System of Influence and Power Determined by Money
The rich have a lot of sway in life, don't they? This modality of society has been reflected in Steem. And it seems to have been taken to another level.
If you have money power/SP, you have the power to decide who gets attention, who gets rewarded, and who gets their rewards taken away. Those with the most money get to decide that the most. That doesn't sound like an improvement for a society. Like the real world, those with money can reward others for their work or give it away. Ok. But imagine if the rich could even take money away from those who are rewarded by others. Does that seem right?
Anyone with wealth, money or Steem Power has influence and power, to some degree. Though some vastly more than others. Whoever has the most money, has the most power. And as such, those with a lot of money power, aka STEEM Power, can do whatever they want as long as the code allows it. Only wealth can combat wealth on the platform.
Source
There are no laws for conduct apart from the flawed "code = law" construct. Misbehavior that is done within the context of what the code allows can be perpetuated. The restraint or consequences that can be applied comes in the form of others with money power/SP. Those who have little wealth, riches or SP, can't stand very well against those who have more. Money rules the platform.
There is a very long-term plan to have more people with more money power/SP. Distribution. Buy, earn or scam/cheat your way to more SP. Those who have much SP, want to keep getting more SP. Those with the more SP can get more SP during the same amount of time that those with less SP get less SP. The rich get richer, while the masses struggle to get more.
A few people do climb in "ranks", from minnow, to dolphin, to orca. But that takes a long time, and not everyone can get there.
All of this might be similar to how regular society works. True. You have to work your way up, and some people scam or cheat their way up. But there are laws in place that people abide by. The poor and rich alike can face justice for their actions. And it doesn't take the richest in society to impose consequences. And even without "codified" laws in society, people often know right from wrong. In many cases, the legal system is a failure and allows or even creates injustice. But in numbers, consequences can be brought to bear.
Similarly, smaller accounts may be powerless alone on Steem, but together they can stand against the wealthy who abuse their money power/SP to do whatever they want. We have an amazing platform, with many great people. But like society, few want to band together to actively do something to make things better when the money powers get out of line. An accumulated level of SP needs to be harnessed to combat the rich who rule without impunity. If too few stand together, they simply become targets for the powerful to abuse.
This can change, and I hope to help change it. The site I'm making will hopefully be able to empower individuals in manual curation, as well as community interaction to get things done together.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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This post is why I rejected Steemit early on. I don't even mind that they set it up this way...That doesn't bother me at all but the audacity and duplicity of suggesting this site is anything for the better is what pisses me off. It makes everyone at the top of this pyramid ass-holes, IMO...Which is why I don't bother engaging in this anti-social site.
Is it possible to create a platform similar to Steemit Inc, running on the same steem blockchain, but with different rules?
I love the basic steemit.com idea and I love the community I have interacted with on it. The numerical skewing of the reward system by too few owning too much robs well intended bloggers and those who follow them from any monetary incentive sponsoring them.
This is sad. It seems to be still possible for any poster of quality content to build a healthy following and to achieve at least some recognition, albeit without significant reward. Some have to earn their daily meals with the time they spend writing really quality posts. If quality authors cannot support themselves writing articles specifically for posting here, the system fails them.
Simple as that.
We had different rules before they changed them to these.
The community rejected rule by the ninjamine and stinc quickly hardforked (a couple weeks) to favor the ninjamine over everybody else.
Then they did their best to relegate that fact to the memory hole by favoring new voices that didnt know the history.
And yes, a fork is possible.
There are more witnesses outside the top 20 than in it.
Though we cant know how many are stinc being sneaky.
Mmmm...a fork with no bot-voting; a fork where wealth does not obtain power; a fork where voting power is gained only by posting quality articles; a fork where active witnesses are perhaps a little more randomly selected from a geographically evenly spread pool of candidates capable of doing it; a fork with a constitution stipulating forbidden contra POB activities and means to counteract...mmm...think it possible?
Nearly everything is possible,...not probable, at this point.
Too many loose ends to tie up.
When steemd can run on homebrew servers the likeliness rises.
Thanks
You’re making a site or Steem plugin? I am interested in either but it sounds like a good idea. There will always be abuse of a system such as this, not sure how a system would work that doesn’t allow some abuse.
You've got me curious about that site. Sounds an interesting idea. We definitely need to cut out some of the bigger weeds of this platform, so that it improves the experience for everyone else. And I won't say anything else.
It's pretty depressing when you are the bottom in all aspects of life because of the money problem. The mass is 💯 more powerful, its only idleness apathy and fear that hold ppl back.
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Voted 4 u
😁
Will be curious to see the site you mention. In some ways the POS allowance to take away what others have voted for is probably an impediment of sorts for some apps as that would not fit their model very well. I am curious how one would build atop this chain without allowing someone with lots of SP to wreak havoc on it. I know Steemit.inc has appeared to be readying us for them shutting this down, and I have to imagine the insults and shit talking they get here has helped them not lose sleep over coming to that decision.
Indeed, the part where higher level users can take away your money does not seem fair. It would be better to use downvotes just to hide or lower the position of offensive posts without taking money out of people's pockets, that gets abused.
Curated for #informationwar (by @wakeupnd)
Ways you can help the @informationwar!
FreezePeach
And those with the most courage will resist the people that caused them to get it.
Where do you live?
I want to move there, too.
The platform is currently ruled by money.
If good is to prevail, it will become ruled by right and wrong.
If wrong prevails, it self destructs, imo.
Time will tell.
Wasnt that the purpose of the ninjamine?
Steemit account to fight abuse rather than propel it?
We really got jacked there, too.
The few take for themselves rather than stand up to bullies that abuse the commons.
Yea, steem!