"Wait, I have to give you money in order for me to make money..?)"

capitalism m8 that is literally the entire economic system

>Unfortunately the curation reward system that we have today has been shown to incentivize the wrong type of behavior:

>A large portion of voting is taking place without users even reading or evaluating the content.

Without curation rewards and bots, there still won't be people reading and evaluating the content. There won't be many votes either. This is basically a wash.

>Many voters calculate whether they will receive a good curation reward, over whether they 'like' the content.

I don't see why this really matters. Users can do both. And each has their own merits. Voting for rewards isn't necessarily a vote made on lesser content. These aren't mutually exclusive judgments. 

>Lots of quality engaging content does not receive significant rewards, because it is not expected to receive a lot of votes.

"Quality" and "significant" are completely subjective/arbitrary criteria for judging rewards. Post rewards aren't an indication of quality and with a stake-weighted system, they may never be. Dan could easily go through and double vote on a bunch of posts with his two main accounts, and even have Ned follow behind him. That wouldn't indicate to me that the post was necessarily a "quality" post, but that's what the system is. Those posts may gain "significant rewards," but that would mean practically nothing when discussing quality or popularity.

>Very few people vote on comments, because there is no expected curation reward.

Very few people vote on comments because very few people are actually reading them...or the blog posts.

>The benefits to removing curation rewards would be:

>It would remove a confusing aspect of the platform that is unappealing to typical new users.

Rather than removing the rewards, why not explain the rewards in a much easier way? There's no need to make it complicated. Use pictures if we have to. It really isn't that difficult to grasp. The learning curve is no steeper than learning about the three shells...er...the three tokens. 

>The decision to upvote would simply be based on what content you liked and wanted to reward.

For a lot of users, it's already like that. But what's wrong with gamification for the other users who want to curate for some return on their stake?

>The upvotes would primarily be from users who were actively engaged in the platform.

As a blogger, does it matter where the *upvotes* are coming from?  Personally, I don't care how I get the upvotes. Making some money is great, no matter who's voting for me. The important part is the discussions. 

>The motivation to have bots for purposes other than evaluating good content would be greatly diminished.

Why is this necessarily a good thing? Do you think that bots don't play a role on all other social media sites? Do bots not play an important role on Steemit, even if it's for gamification purposes or improving bot functions and efficiency? 

>Less voting stake would be used, making upvotes from users who do still vote more powerful.

Less voting stake being used might happen. But more likely, those stakeholders would just power down and sell, bringing down the value of the rest of the remaining user base. So, it's a net loss for all of the uppity humans who hate robots. :)

>Regular users' perception of the platform would improve.

Not so. Regular users *who don't like curation rewards and bots* might have an improved perception of the platform. The other huge chunk of the user base will be further disillusioned with the platform. Don't make the mistake of thinking that all "regular users" agree with one side or the other. 

>With a large and engaged audience, that gives us the ability to build a revenue model (such as advertisements) on top of those users. That revenue can be turned into passive earnings for all SP holders.

Well, I'm glad that you at least listened to that and agree with me about it. I just can't figure out why curation rewards can't also exist within this imaginary future platform.

Simply (and coarsely) speaking, the bot problem is due to "***complicated*** (gamification of curation) ***unfair*** (superlinear reward calculation) ***incentive*** (curation reward)"

Removing the incentive can abate the bot problem, but I think removing the former two (complicated and unfair) also can reduce the problem significantly. See @sigmajin's [post](https://steemit.com/curation/@sigmajin/an-opponent-of-the-exponent-making-the-case-for-vshare-linearity) and @ats-david's [post](https://steemit.com/steemit/@ats-david/on-curation-rewards-and-their-necessity) for further discussions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa92JyIbmnQ

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One thing this debate has revealed to me... is that lots of people seem to think the best way to increase the value of their account... is by behaving in ways that earn them more STEEM rather than by behaving in ways that raise the price of STEEM. 

It's like everyone's fighting for a slightly bigger piece of a really small pie, rather than trying to grow the pie. Maybe everyone's just assuming other people will grow it, so they're just jockeying for position. But IMO, this pie could be huge if everyone stopped trying to get more STEEM and started trying to make STEEM more valuable. Even the minnows on this platform right now will be whales over night if Steemit grows to be the size of Reddit or beyond.

Whales wanting more STEEM right now makes no sense to me. Even as a small dolphin... I'd way rather see the price of STEEM increase than see my stake increase. I don't vote for curation rewards. I vote for people who I believe are increasing the value of STEEM... call me crazy lol but that's how I think I'm going to make the most money.