I'm glad you get the comparison and I agree with you about it being better than facebook, etc... And yes of course, there is always room for improvement ;)  Going to read your last two blogs right now!  :)

I agree very much with you @beeyou about showing some life on the platform.  That's why I am saying that it creates a problem when the owners just delegate their vote and visit the mailbox for their checks (but still decide who the witnesses are).  They really don't have any clue what the attrition rate is, what people are saying, and whether any of the arguments have validity... After all this place changes so fast, what happened 2 weeks ago is even ancient history in many cases.

I do love your analogy about absentee owners that have their property managed.   You would think they would get new property managers.  The problem that analogy brings up is that it will mean a lot of pain to the people that we care about (like Asher).  Because unfortunately that is true and will happen if the price of steem drops low enough.  If they could solve the problem before steem drops below a $1 that would be better for many, but unfortunately many are not even in tune enough to realize it is a possibility.  

I do agree with you also about the early adopters eventually cashing out, and I also agree that communities will sprout up over time. The real variable that I am following is what price it will take to change things (ie how low it will have to go).  But if the whales can encourage the communities to develop more like @curie @helpie @newbieresteemday @qurator @ifc @cryptoempire etc... then maybe those support groups will sprout up and make the churn much much less.  I do think the social aspect is what keeps me here and I hope over time it gets stronger and our bonds become even deeper and spread out to give this place some really strong roots.

Good try Biff, but you didn't quite make it ;) ... Just playing with you... :)

Seriously you are right about money ruling it all.  Just like life, this isn't "fair" either.  There is no democracy, it is not one man = one vote.  It is he who has the money, makes the rules.  Fair or not, that is what it is.  The best we can hope to do is have fun and earn a little, or be a**holes and earn a lot.  You get to choose what you want, that is the best you can do.  

And you are exactly right about the votes, that is a function that there aren't as many active members as we think there is.  That is due to attrition and churn.

I love it... it would be the best way to get that SP moving in the right direction... I am going to enter Asher's contest, and frankly that is a helluva idea.... you figure out how to do it, and you have a partner to do it with DDC ;)

Awesome!  I love this kinda info @enforcer48!  Thank you and yes I'm glad people like you see it too... The more we can shed some sunshine on the situation, the quicker we can maybe bring attention to it and ***maybe*** help to make some changes.

And yes I see that about FTG... I can't believe he didn't get support for what he tried to do... It was a bit disheartening on that front.  But on the other hand, we did find out some very valuable information on what is the truth about how people collectively think.  That in and of itself is important in identifying problems.

Yes you understood it correctly... They get their cake (money from leasing out their SP) and they also get to eat it too (they get to choose who is in power by voting for the witnesses).

>when someone delegates their SP, they still get to vote for witnesses at the full weight of their SP, even though they no longer can use the full weight of their SP to curate?  **YES**

>So, they're not actively participating on Steemit, but they're reaping the rewards of delegation and still full weight witness voting. **YES**

lol on the point about people commenting... The bigger they are, the less likely they will be to comment on this.  Yes the ones that have some intestinal fortitude will upvote like the ones you see (I count 3 witnesses), but most will just ignore.  The majority doesn't want the gravy train to stop (even if they know the train is bound to derail by pushing it so hard when the engine needs fixed).

And lol on me finding another issue to focus on, you are usually far ahead of me on what is going on!  I'm honored to beat you to the punch on this one :P

From day 1 I have told newbies "welcome to thunder dome " . In my opinion steemit is kill or be killed. Plankton is nothing more than whale food. The quicker you grow the sooner you can start feeding off the others. 

There are several different views on this exact topic.  And this is what I mean when I say that the rules are based by the people with the most power (and it changes all the time).  Some people belong to groups that autovote them, they pay for being a member, and in essence it is the same thing.  And in reality using bidbots is a way to upvote yourself... Plus the people that sell there votes are also monetizing the value to themselves.

Basically, I think it is an individual decision that is based on your own goals and aspirations.  If you self upvote, then you probably won't get many people to ever delegate to you because they will want their vote to go to the community.  But if you are looking at this as an investment, then self upvoting is the best business decision you could make, as it will give you the highest reward from your vote.

Right now we are in a period where many people have many different opinions on the topic, so I say just do what you feel is right.  Don't let others judge you, because only you know your true motivation.

I hear your point, I doubt they will ever go for a "democratic" solution... I think they like the idea of it being like voting for a corporation, the more shares you own, the more votes you have... And yes I agree about the inactive people too, that is a HUGE problem!

Thanks @qurator!  I finally got my voting power back and upped my vote to over a $0.10 on autovote through steemauto to support you guys.  I didn't like falling to the tier 0 level because I do support what you have done for all of us!  :)

haha... I love this quote @rossfletcher

>For one thing i think way too fast and write too slow and by the time i get this far in a post i'm over it. Whatever i started writing about initially that train has left the station.

That is definitely true for me many times!  :P

And yes there are so many different aspects of this puzzle that staying on top of it all becomes quite the task for sure!  

Thanks for commenting and for the honesty :)

thank you @sequentialvibe!  I appreciate knowing that we think alike here.  I wasn't sure if I stated it properly, but hopefully some get the idea of "having cake and eat it too" aspect behind this.

I will keep on keeping on!  You too @simon62... we aren't going anywhere and one day we will look back and laugh at this period of time!

thank you, this is the first time I've seen this on my page! :)

Thank you @vanemilano!  :)

ps... don't forget to vote your witnesses!

Matt, thank you very much for the lengthy and well thought out reply.  You earn respect in my book for being a witness that is willing to put your views out in the open.  I do understand your point about the fact that the large holders can just change methods, so no real difference will exist for long as they would have a workaround.  I had not thought of that, so thank you for pointing it out.  I do think it might have an effect on the margin, I'll discuss later below.

To answer this question:

>What do you think would happen if the top witnesses did those things?

I would say that the witnesses would lose their votes from the guys with the SP.  So what we would end up with would be new witnesses that support the needs of the large owners.

About your point about people saying if we do "x" and then that will fix it, the point is completely taken.  I realize that this is a very complex situation and my point about this being a simple solution trivializes the many things that would have to change to make it happen.  I should've said a "simple concept", but it is certainly more complex with the implementation.

As far as why I think the concept has some merit (maybe not as much as I originally thought, as you described ways they could get around this), is because it would affect things at the margin.  For instance, there are many votes that are cast everyday from thousands of people that never even log on.  If they aren't logging on, then they probably aren't updating their witness votes.  So the status quo becomes even more entrenched as their votes remain the same day after day no matter what the issues are.

Also at the margin I think there would be a some change in the willingness to delegate their power.  Right now some just delegate out to the highest bidder, which requires no thought or effort to learn the issues.  At least if they lost their witness voting power along with the leases, then they would have to choose from a pool of people that agree with them and the things they want done (ie they become more informed and less passive).

And finally I 100% agree with you that this system mirrors what happens in life.  Fair or unfair, you are exactly right when you mention that power gets concentrated at the top.  And just like in real life, it is something that we must all realize as a fact.  I admire that you have chosen to take a constructive approach and work within the parameters of what "can be done" as opposed to what "would be nice to do".  You are right about human nature and I agree completely that working to make the platform better is a good thing to do, as opposed to fighting everything that is wrong at every turn.

I would differ in one way from you though, and that is in thinking the problems that we all see are "un-fixable".  I think they are very fixable, but only with all stakeholders at the table.  If the people that have such a large share of ownership realized they have a problem, then maybe one day they will sit down and properly deal with that problem.  That is what I hold out hope for.  

Frankly they are the ones with the biggest stakes in this venture, if it succeeds or fails it will impact them the most.  What I am suggesting is that they see the problem before it becomes "un-fixable" and irreversible.   As with any market, people seem to be able to spot the problems easily in hindsight.  What I'm attempting to do is bring up a way to keep the ownership in tune with the users and managers of the system ***before*** these issues become "un-fixable".  

But just like the owners have the right to make the platform what they want it to be, the users also get to choose whether they want to use this platform or not.  I have seen firsthand a "churn rate" here on steemit that would cause many executives to lose their jobs in the real world.  And this kind of churn rate does not bode well for the future (if the status quo remains).  I (and many like me that care) am trying to come up with a constructive ideas to make the system work better.  There are many wonderful things about steemit, including you.  I wish more witnesses would engage the community and try to understand how the "everyday user" thinks so they can adjust where and when needed.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my post, to address the issues, and to engage me (and by extension others).   You have shown yourself to care about the community and I have seen many times that you are there to support us.  I appreciate both of these things very much.

I have a problem with human nature arguments, basically because the economic, political and social environment have a profound impact on what is deemed to be 'acceptable' levels of self-interest. 

As I see it, late-capitalism encourages a particular form of self-interested behavior: the pursuit of capital gain, and this has 'evolved/ regressed' (depending on how you see it) to have fewer rules which dictate the movement of capital and fewer restrictions on the ability of the those with capital to move it about in order to maximise their ROI. 

Crypto currency and steemit (possibly especially) just provide greater opportunities for people that have already been encouraged to pursue the self interested pursuit of capital accumulation to carry on doing so, but they offer much greater potential returns (at more risk) over a shorter time. Obviously the more capital people already have, the more able they are to become empowered on steemit, and win over the witnesses. 

OK - this is probably stating the obvious.. what I'm trying to say is that steemit as it is doesn't just allow 'selfish human nature' to carry on doing: our capitalist system encourages a particular manifestation of selfishness (making no value judgement here) and steemit amplifies it. 

It's maybe this amplification factor that makes people so mad: you don't see this selfish-propensity of humanity (I won't call it human nature) in such a raw form in ordinary life - but, once again, it is the structure of steemit as it is, located in the capitalist system as it is in this particular historical moment, that has allowed this to happen - bid bot use is not down to 'human nature' it's down to this  transhuman conflation located in a postmodern capitalist political economy which encourages individuals to pursue self interest with more freedom and fewer restrictions than in any other domain on the planet, real or hyperreal. 

Bizarrely however, because everything's a lot more complex than that people like  @davemccoy also join steemit, as do lots of other like minded people and start raging against it (it seems dialectical). 

I'll look forward to that post.... but please don't fall back on 'human nature' arguments! Humans have the capacity to do many things - be selfish, be altruistic, even to question the nature of the self and to transcend it. 

Also, we're way beyond 'human nature' here anyway, many of the 'users' aren't actually human!

As to your 'how do we fix it question'  VERY GOOD QUESTION. Too long to comment on in-depth, suffice to say, I understand what you are saying about the complexities of making changes.