The other day, I was talking about my work life a little, and how the company I am employed at went through a recapitalization. This means that venture capital exited for a profit, and new venture capital bought hoping to make future profits. It was a very large exit for the initial VC, which means that the new VC has bought at a high premium. But who knows, perhaps there is a long way up still to go for the company.
But, what has changed is that up until this point, every employee has been a part owner of the company. Sure, it might not be that much for some people, but it is still significant for many and absolutely life-changing for a few. Now though, rather than working for a future payoff, everyone will be working for a salary alone, and that changes a lot of the motivations behind the work. I suspect that even for many minor holders, their "attachment" to the work place has just decreased significantly.
Skin in the game
having a personal investment, usually monetary, in the pursuit of a goal or achievement. This concept is often used in business, finance, and investing, where individuals or entities put their own resources at risk to achieve a desired outcome.
On Hive, it is pretty easy to get some skin in the game, without using one's own monetary resources. This is done by creating content of some sort and getting votes from others who have put their own skin, stake, into the game themselves, so they can draw some value from the pool and allocate it as they deem fit. And when they allocate on authors, that author is going to get a bump to their platform reputation, the number next to their name.
This is mine:
While that is the fifth highest rep on the platform, the reputation itself doesn't really mean much by itself, as all it is is an indicator of vote amounts over time. For instance, the highest rep on the platform is this:
This is part of an initiative that helps to stabilize the price of HBD at 1 dollar US, which has been relatively successful over the last couple years. But as you can see, it has only posted ten times, so it is the comments that are getting the votes daily. Yet, while the gap between 84 and that 99.11 rep might not seem so much, at my current rate of posting and votes received, it would probably take me about 40 years to get there. That is just an estimate, and perhaps someone can do the math, but you get the point.
It is unreachable.
But, while the reputation might not indicate much by itself, coupled with HP held, it tells a bit of a story in many cases, Because if a person has a high rep, but doesn't have much HP, it means that they have been getting voted significantly, but not leaving even the half they get pre-staked in, so they have powered down. There are some other alternatives to this, but it is likely that 95% of the time or more, that is the case.
I stole these images from 
The first image is a chart that is showing the held HP against the reputation, and the one below has it conveniently separated into the informal classes of dolphins (5000+ HP), Orcas (50,000+ HP) and whales (500,000+ HP).
Do you notice something?
These are actually the 1000 largest holders of Hive Power. This means the top 1000 accounts with the most skin in the game. While this is an imprecise way to do this, if you have a look at the high reps around the 75-85 mark you will see that there are a lot of accounts, with the majority of them being in the dolphin category. Again, imprecise, but we can assume that because of the reputation score, these accounts are or have been at some point in time, creator accounts - people who have earned their reputation through the staked votes of others, and therefore, have also earned Hive Power, and likely HBD.
If you remember from above, in order to allocate from the pool, it takes stake. And what this means is that those who don't have stake, can't allocate the rewards pool. So, those who have high reputations but have little Hive Power, have earned from people with skin in the game, but haven't invested into having much skin in the game themselves, which means that they can't reward much to other content creators like themselves, or support the same communities that they themselves have benefited from.
Do you see any issues?
Once earned and in ones own wallet, people can do as they please with their HIVE and HBD. However, if looking at this from an investors point of view, why would an investor invest into people who aren't willing to invest themselves into the same investment? People who aren't willing to share some of the risk and put a little of their skin in the game.
To each their own.
However, I always find it interesting when people talk about how great Hive is, or how they want the token to go up, but they aren't actually invested. Yes, I get that people can do what they want with their Hive, but what they are making themselves are employees, not owners.
Being an employee is great, because it carries very little responsibility and no business risk. There is also the benefit that an employee can just quit and walk away, without a loss. However, an employee doesn't get much benefit from business success and of course, an employee can be fired at any time.
No one can be fired on Hive.
No one can stop an account from posting or even from it getting voted on. But, people can stop voting, people can downvote, people can mute in communities and entire front ends if the owners choose to do so. An employee on Hive who posts for an income stream but holds nothing, can build no income stream for themselves. Nor can they distribute any value to other accounts, which means that they are unable to support people who like them, are looking to earn. Even if the content is good, is it good enough to not care about the rest of the community?
Unlikely.
I am somewhere in that clump of people who have high reputations, as well as a fair amount of Hive Power. I have taken Hive out on occasion, I have also bought Hive on occasion, and I have supported other Hive projects on occasion. And as many know, I keep on creating content daily, in the hope of inspiring people to improve their lives, including their financial lives.
Forever an employee?
One of the things I have spoken about many times and love about Hive, is here, I get to be an owner-operator. I get to work and get paid for it, but I have the chance to continually buy into the model and own a little of it. I am part employee because I rely on votes for my content, but I am also part owner of the pool and can both distribute and earn from the pool through curation. But, just like the investors who bought the company I work for, I don't want to support employees who aren't willing to play their part in adding value and, content creation alone really isn't enough.
There is plenty of content on the internet already.
So what makes the content on Hive different isn't in the content itself, but it is in the community aspect of it. A person can be a great creator, but if they aren't actually adding value to the community through that creation, is it valuable? What "value" means is open to interpretation and comes with many exceptions for sure, but it is something to consider.
If you were a venture capitalist that invested in Hive in the hope of increasing the value of the platform you part own, what kind of content and what kind of creator would you invest into?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
