In the first days after the airdrop I was lucky enough to acquire a nice portion of PAL. Initially I set my goal at 5000 PAL, which I raised a day later to 15000 PAL. Prices were low those first days (though rising fast) so I managed to reach that goal in three days with the little money I had available. With hindsight I can only regret that I did not spend the money I had available right at the first day. Had I done that, I would have had 30000+ PAL. That teaches me that even though I was bold enough to jump into the PAL experience right away, I'm still a cautious person.
Having 15000 PAL means I have a vote that means something. In the first days a 100% vote at more or less maximum voting power meant 10 PAL as a reward. Probably because of the hard fork that introduced digital precision for PAL, that has reduced to about 7 today. Not as nice a number as 10, yet still a considerable reward for each vote. In Steem my vote is worth around 3 dollarcent, in PAL it is worth (with the exchange rate STEEM/PAL at the moment of writing) around 1 dollar, 20 cents.
For the first time in my Steem experience I started thinking about 'curating'. Having a vote that makes some impact lead me to think how I should use that vote. Before I just upvoted at random, within the little circle for which the content of my posts had some meaning. And I could continue that, of course. However, I can also use it to support accounts that have a smaller voting power than mine. In Steem I am still one of the small accounts, just barely a minnow, and I know how stimulating it is when someone with a large(r) voting power votes for my content. Perhaps I should take that line of thought even further, and skip the accounts that have a PAL value far above mine. However, that would mean I should not vote any longer on one of the accounts (
Now, if it were all about altruism, it would not be that difficult. However, let's be honest, voting is for a large part egocentric as well. The 50/50 split makes voting really attractive. For each vote worth 10 PAL, I get roughly 5 (depending on who else votes, when they vote, when I vote etcetc; I do not really understand the mechanisms). In the first few days I just voted here, I voted there, I voted everywhere, more based on what I would get out of it, than on the content I was actually voting on. And it was fun. Reading about curating on Steem suggests it is a difficult thing to do, with losts of things to think about, like vote weight, voting time, who has already voted, who is likely to vote, when will he/she likely vote. It's all about maximizing the return of the vote and that's not easy. For me on Pal, it was just fun. I voted on anything I remotely liked and of course on the accounts in the little circle I already voted on, never giving much thought about timing etcetc, because, hey, I would get roughly half anyway.
The question is how to balance altruism and egocentrism is a more ethical way. To vote solely based on my half of the reward makes me feel uncomfortable. To go the all altruistic way would mean to stop support activities I really value, and that makes me feel uncomfortable as well. So the ethical way for me lies somewhere in between those extremes. The difficult part for me at this moment, is how to decide, on a post-by-post basis, what to vote for and what not, given that I want to support the growing of smaller accounts and that I want to support what is valuable to me. And what should get precendence over the other. I am still undecided, meaning my voting rate is rather low at the moment.
Is this in any way recognizable for others? Or do I just make things difficult for myself?
And I haven't even touched yet on the topic of self-voting...