As I was thinking about today's post, one thing led to another until I came up with this title.
It may be interesting to lay out the entire flow of thoughts too. After I dismissed a couple of ideas for today's post, I suddenly remembered having read somewhere recently that censorship resistance + account ownership can more effectively be explained to someone young as something like: you can't lose your job on Hive. Or something like that, I don't remember the exact words or where I read it.
That could be a revelation for someone looking for a job or after losing one. Even though I wouldn't recommend coming to Hive with a job mentality, but rather with a business mentality, especially if you are from a developed country. Hive doesn't pay salaries or rarely does. And it's certainly tough for many newcomers. But if they stick around, things can change in time.
I would have worded it in a slightly different way: nobody can fire you from Hive!
Then my thoughts went to Twitter and the employees and management that lost their jobs when Elon Musk arrived. Not entirely the same thing, though, and it needs to be expanded further.
On Hive, you may be employed by a company or an individual to work on a certain project. As such, you can lose your job like any employee. It happened with many employees at Splinterlands last year, the most visible example.
But as a participant in the Hive ecosystem, as a stakeholder, you can't be fired. You are the boss! Your own boss. And you decide how you want to run your business, how many hours you put in, in what way you contribute to the ecosystem. That's how decentralization works.
There's no middle management to tell you what to do, evaluate your work and keep the eyes on you.
Every once in a while there are calls to action: hey, we need some people with these skills to do this and that here. Some people show up while others don't. Those who do most often are rewarded more than directly, also in improved "social rank" (reputation) on the network.
But you decide what to get involved with and, those who consistently work to build up their Hive business (be it only the $HIVE stake, for example), have time and history on their side.
And here comes the part where Hive cannot fire you. If you've taken time to build up your account, build an income stream or more, you can't lose this like you can lose a job. It's true, an income stream may dry out or become unprofitable at some point, but that can be replaced. While the base on Hive is solid I believe there will always be alternatives for as long as Hive goes on.
So yeah, be very active, leave, come back, it doesn't matter. Or it does, for your progress. But nobody can fire you from Hive, lock/close your account for inactivity, etc. But here's the interesting part: you can't fire Hive either. You can't close an account, it's yours forever, unless... you sell it and the new owner changes the private keys. You know... like a piece of property. Or a business...
In a way, this may be inefficient and it may be an issue for us as we scale up. But until then, these are the limits of the game. So play it well!
