This is a steem/steemit community related post. I've been here almost 13 months now and I've seen some cycles. I have noticed something though, and I want to approach this subject in what may seem a bizarre way.
I want to tell you a story before I dive into the purpose of this story.
In a schoolyard in Steemville there were children running around and interacting. There was the normal pushing and tugging on hair that children do and the sticking out of tongues. There were some children that had some advantages that they acquired somewhere. They had spent some money and they had some gadgets to make giving wedgies, and to shoot someone across the room. They had advantages. These advantages primarily existed due to the fact they could afford to purchase them and others could not. Having these things does not mean they would use them.
Occasionally one of these kids would hear some child talking about topics they didn't like and they would go to town using their wedgie and spit ball tools to attack the child. If someone complained they might reach into their pocket and hand that complainer a couple dollars and suggest they go buy themselves something from the vending machine. Soon there are people standing around saying how great this guy is in the hope that they too might get some dollars.
The guy smiles. Nods. Hands out some occasional dollars, and continues to give wedgies and hails of spitballs upon those that talk about things they dislike. Occasionally they need to refurbish their tool, or get some better and slimier ammunition for their spitball gun.
Sometimes the complainers come out talking about how people should be able to talk about what they want, and if the bully doesn't like it they can simply choose not to listen. There are suddenly more wedgie and spitball targets.
Eventually the persons activities are noticed. Someone else that also had such devices but hadn't been using them might suddenly start using them against this bully and it becomes a contest of who can spend the most on bully assisting tools. There also might be more complaining from the original bully talking about how the new guy is a bully.
One day the bully came up with a plan. It was a plan that could get them more tools. They tried hard to keep themselves in check and do less of the wedgie spitball assaults. They bought themselves a new shirt that they like to wear that shows a smiley face.
They show up at school with a bag full of pieces of candy of different sizes and quality. They tell people they can reach into the bag and take a piece without looking if they pay him a quarter per piece they take. Some of the pieces are worth more than a quarter in terms of how much they cost, but overall this is a profit making scheme.
The process continues until there is a nice pool of money to spend and then the kid goes to upgrade their tools. They may be able to out perform the other guy that attacked them. This is the wedgie spitball weapons race.
So what was that all about?
We have had cases of people pseudo-censoring topics they don't like whether by hiding them, or perhaps down voting them so the target person cannot earn anything no matter how many people up vote them as long as the person down voting them can cancel out all of those votes.
This has been frowned upon and there have been discussions about how the down vote should only be used for spam, plagiarism, or abuse. Later they added disagreement about rewards.
This doesn't stop people from doing it simply because they don't like a topic or the author of a topic.
There is a lot of outrage over this and occasionally negative PR flagging wars can arise. There is an occasional discussion about how some of these people only have the power they do due to being in the right place at the right time before steemit existed and mined their power.
This brings up the issue with consolidation of power and how the curation algorithm and other things continue to further consolidate that power within these same people. This was even more disproportional prior to Hard Fork 19 when the voting curve was exponential rather than linear.
After people created other accounts, shifted power around, and created a new costume interesting things occurred.
We had accounts arise with a lot of power delegated to them that would offer to vote on ANY link you send them if it is sent to them as part of a payment in steem dollars. This is similar to reaching into the bag in my kid example above.
You earned the steem dollars and then you are sending them to the person so they will vote for what you want. This voting amount is randomized and sometimes it is worth less than those steem dollars and sometimes it is slightly more. It is essentially gambling.
It is however, further consolidating power within the voting service account holder. Sometimes these are the same people that have no problems with subjectively down voting anything they want to even if it is not spam, plagiarism, or abuse. They change their account, they offer a service (which I initially thought was pretty cool) and then they further consolidate their power by getting you to spend what you earned back on them.
Alternative
I like the idea of people being able to spend money to increase a post. Why don't we try to get steemit inc. to add a way so you can SPEND money on a post and that will be DEFINITE EARNINGS. People would still vote and that would still remain POTENTIAL earnings as it is now.
So if someone wanted to down vote the post to oblivion they would still get what you PAID them directly. This direct payment would also not be factored into curation.
We can do this now simply by doing a transfer in the wallet with a comment. You can tip. Yet there is something to be said for the dollar amount being VISIBLE. It shows someone liked it and was willing to pay for it. it also does NOT tap into the reward pool at all since it is people paying directly.
Essentially I am proposing a Tipping system be built directly into the monetary visibility aspect of the post, and that the tip be SAFE from the subjective down voter.
If we did this then you could spend your $2 (or $1, or whatever) SBD directly on a post and you would be giving that person $2.
This will provide a similar but known service without further consolidating the wealth and power in the hands of those that people were already concerned about the power consolidation.
