The thing is, I actually think that you would be an excellent witness to vote for if you could be trusted to look out for the minnows. I say this because you have a shitload of STEEM, and I would like to think that would mean you are far less likely to be susceptible to bribery by colluding whales, if ever such a situation should arise.
This is the problem I have with finding people to vote for. The way I see it, witnesses are scarcely different from politicians in the material world. And thus, they are vulnerable to the same things also.. eg. being bribed, coerced, or having to adopt a disingenuous persona in public in order to be liked.
I worry about that a lot on Steemit, not just with witnesses, but especially with them. Too much of what I read sounds like bullshit to be completely honest. No one is that nice all the time, and so it just comes across as an act to me.
I still don't really know what your goal is, Bernie, so I can't trust that you will be looking out for anyone other than yourself. But, I can say that you are one of few who I have never had to question whether you are pretending to be nice to serve an agenda.
This is reason enough for me to vote for you. You don't talk utter shit like a politician and you're less likely to bend over for someone with more SP, so fuck it. You can have my tiny vote.
Dude, bernie has been the life blood for a lot of us. Granted he isn't giving us 100% votes, he does give a large upvote to minnows all the time. The key is getting to know the guy in chat and not just viewing a one sided opinion of how and what he post. He is legit one of the most down to earth whales I have met.
I support the bernie comment !
I approve this message!
I approve the approval of this message !
I disapprove of you approving my approval. Who do you think you are buddy?
I would say the fact that I'm powering down a very little amount of Steem Power when I could be converting everything to liquid Steem and waiting for the next big rise says quite a bit. But, that's just me.
I appreciate the vote.
I would have absolutely no problem with you selling your own STEEM, especially if it was your intent to buy back in lower and lock more of it up long term. It's selling votes that I wish you wouldn't do.
I was going to leave it at that, but it's just occurred to me; if I am somehow able to pull off the impossible and convince you not to sell votes, then there's a good chance that others will follow your example until the ones left doing it no longer have their actions looked upon as harmless to the steem ecosystem. So, allow me one chance to change your perspective on this vote selling shit.
I can think of many reasons why this practice should be stopped, but for the sake time, I will narrow it down to the three most important.
This is becoming a really shit site for content
People who are guaranteed a whalevote or who know they are going to pay for their own votes have far less reason to actually post anything decent, it doesn't matter to them because they're getting paid either way. This is evident most days simply by clicking on the trending page.
The people who actually can produce good content(and I will allow myself to be perceived as arrogant by including myself in said category) also have far less incentive to post good content.
This is because the whalevotes are now mostly allocated for sale to shitposters, and so we know that if we are unwilling to pay for our votes, there's little chance of us making much anyway. Why then bother to put in the effort on a six or ten hour post when the last five you did made pennies? I have shamelessly resorted to reposting and doing short posts because each time I put the effort in and produce something which is decent, it gets overlooked. I'm not asking anyone to come and vote for me here, I probably don't have anything worth voting on right now anyway. I am just demonstrating how this can lead to a reduction in post quality from people who once put in a lot of effort, and I can see this everywhere.
It is encouraging shitty human behaviour
Before the inception of vote-selling, one had a chance to do well on Steemit simply by providing good content alone. There's always the option of playing the game, such as you can with life, and making an active effort to make friends you would otherwise not have spoken to, all to get more followers, views, or if you're really lucky, stuck onto a whales autovoter. But for those of us who are unwilling to play this game, of whom I know a few, the opportunity once existed just to post good content and every now and again get rewarded for it well. With this option now gone, more people have opted to play the game, and there is less and less genuine interaction on Steemit because of it.
Put simply, it's greedy as fuck, man.
I'm not looking to make an enemy of you. We have had our disagreements in the past but it seems to me like the dust settled long ago. There are also aspects of your character that I admire, and also ones we have in common, such as frankness. I am not looking to cast stones at you from up high. I have done plenty of shitty things too, and even recently I have felt myself having to act in ways I did not want to. I am just trying to appeal to your fucking humanity here. Selling votes isn't worthy of curation rewards, and you guys are getting filthy fucking rich here while STEEM's market cap is heading for the tens of billions, and many of us who have been here a long time and helped Steemit get to where it is have been left struggling. I do not even refer to myself in this case. I had plenty of STEEM come my way, and if I hadn't had to power it down I think I'd be doing pretty well right now. What I am saying is, are we all so disconnected from one another that some of us are able to sell something to the rest of us that they were already getting paid to give to us for free, while they end up with more money than even they had imagined when this begun, and many of the others whose input into the platform helped all of you get that, either have to betray their morals, adopt a persona, suck a few cocks and lick an arse or two, pay for their own upvotes, or starve? It just seems fucked up to me, still, even after 30 years in this world, that we can do that to one another in a quest for way more than we need.
I know the whole site is set up like a game to pit us against one another and push us to want to have the most SP, highest rep, largest pending payouts and whatever other bullshit makes us feel the best. But this is not actually the game it appears to be. It isn't just about which whale can be the most powerful. We have a legitimate fucking chance here to show the world, and more importantly, ourselves, that we as a people know how to govern ourselves. If we fuck it up, I'm not convinced we are going to like how we are governed in the future.
Please consider other options than selling your voting power.