"You've done some considerable thinking about this, and I appreciate it. However, you simply ignore prior discussions of these specific proposals we have undertaken, and circular thinking isn't going to get you anywhere. Using IP's as some sort of oracle to sort individual users is trivially defeated, for example. Anonymous voting is a fraud superhighway. Changing the labels on the buttons is irrelevant. If I wanted to use Reddit, I'd be on Reddit."

Thank you, I can assure you that I am not ignoring our prior discussions about this specific proposal. I either disagree, do not understand, or do not comprehend your assertion that it won't work. To be very clear, the software may have to identify that any up-sort or down-sort is coming from an authentic and logged in Steemian. It will allow only one sort per post. The only way to abuse the system will be to create a myriad of sockpuppets. However, you'll also have to find a way to make it so they are not all voting from the same IP address because when the software realizes that post number 25,064,921 suddenly has 723 up-sorts from the same IP address, it will automagically de-rank the post. I think this is fairly sound, but if you can think of a way around it, I'm all ears.

"You note that Steem used in this way does not encourage profiteering, but that profiteering is a primary motivation of some people. You seem to imply it's all people, but that's silly. For these people rewarding content is a waste of Steem, when they can reward themselves instead. Who cares about social networking except as a means of generating income anyway?"

People who buy Steem are at some level enticed to do so for the benefit of having more Steem power. This benefit is not a benefit if they cannot upvote their posts as the former GUI had a tick box for. I mean hell, why not go all out and make self voting impossible, then we can see just how it affects the logic of potential investors. So you want me to buy Steem just so that I can give it away to other people? How about I just feed the homeless instead? There's far less work involved, and I can get that feel-good feeling just by looking at the smile it produces on their faces. In the market, we cannot pretend that self-interest is not a thing. The moment we do, we start breaking shit. Forced altruism is the stuff of dictatorships, and nobody wants to buy into that. You won't see people fighting to become citizens of North Korea, and that's because it's an undesirable atmosphere. There's no there there, and the there that is there is probably starving to death.

"You do give money to folks that aren't you every day. Free Speech is no different than any other valuable thing as a reason to spend your money. I bet a lot of your money is spent on it IRL already. So curating content is a reasonable expenditure of funds, and Steem is a particularly useful mechanism to promote speech and communities far more relevant to your interests personally than most media on offer."

I agree that curating content is a reasonable expenditure of funds, I think lots of things are reasonable. However, there is a stark difference between promoting reasonable behavior and forcing it. One leans more towards liberty and the other towards tyranny.

"As long as stake weighting enables profiteers to extract the vast majority of rewards, user retention will remain dismal. I have proposed the Huey Long algorithm to prevent financial manipulation by profiteers, which would leave only that same incentive people have to upvote on Reddit, or other social media platforms, those socially beneficial purposes aforementioned, but won't detail it here because I have discussed it with you previously."

Just be careful what you wish for. If you fix the profiteering issue too well, then you've got another North Korea on your hands. They're not getting any of that good tourist money. The people who do go there to visit are asking for trouble.

"I recall also discussing IP's, and button labeling with you before too. Seems discussion of these matters isn't going to impact your understanding, since you're posting the same proposals here. I'm not really sure what you think these proposals would achieve, since profiteering seems to be the only approach to Steem you consider rational. Flagging rewards back into the pool is a good strategy for profiteering whales, so doesn't make any sense to oppose given that stance on profieering."

The idea is to create a trending page with articles that people want to reward. They'll see high-quality articles on trending with nice rewards, and it will encourage people to get better at content creation. It's not going to solve profiteering, but it won't highlight it either.

"The only way to imbue Steem with value is to grow a market for it. The original intention of Steem was to encourage the growth of that market. Profiteering discourages the growth of that market, so needs to be curtailed in order to grow the market and raise the price of Steem, thus profiting ninjaminer and investor alike, by profiting creators. Ninjaminers are the ones preventing that from happening."

If the ninja miners are in it for the long term, they'll delegate to communities. If they're in it for the short term, they'll sell when they think the time is right and there's nothing we can do about that.

"Steem languishes as a result. It is the social media that creates the value for the token. Encourage society with the token, and the token will gain value. Keeping that token out of the hands of creators prevents it from gaining value. The original vision outlined in the Blue Paper needs to be achieved for Steem to become the valuable money it was intended to be. Whether the outline was blind sided, or blind siding, doesn't matter, because allowing profiteering to replace the purpose of the token has destroyed the trait of the token that allows to gain value."

With my idea about content-sorting, we can aspire to the blue paper's concept concerning proof-of-brain, but it works for content sorting only. Utilizing crowd wisdom to get people fairer rewards is a far more difficult task, and I say that because I cannot even imagine how to accomplish it without breaking the things and stuff.

"Other than limiting per post rewards, what mechanism can discourage profiteering? Note that I am not looking to change human nature, but to effect a rewards mechanism that doesn't financially reward profiteering, and does reward content creation and social engagement financially. Carrots and sticks are what enable civilization, after all, and that is what gives any money it's value."

Carrots and carrots only. Incentivize, incentivize, incentivize—and gamify too. STINC should highlight the efforts of accounts who engage in awesome levels of curation. There can be a game tab on the top, and it can replace the stupid promotion tab. Have different levels of players/curators who curate high-quality content. So, you can have whales, dolphins, and a minnows category that highlights and gamifies quality curations. This will be a free advertisement for people who are awesome.

Bear in mind people brought their money to steem of their own free will and accord. Punish these folks too hard and you're going to create a lot of downward selling momentum in a market where there are few buyers. Technically the profiteers aren't doing any wrong and might not even be profiteering. Some of those folks might be in the red in accordance with their investment. So it might not even be fair to paint them with a broad brush and call them profiteers. After all, we're currently dealing with a largely valueless token.

In the adult world when you use the stick on other adults it's called assault. People are quick to gravitate towards punishment because many of us were beaten as children and therefore they think it works. However, it doesn't fly in the adult world and if you use a stick or a switch on a kid today it's child abuse and you're liable to go directly to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect 200.00 dollars. If we want a liberty-oriented steem but also don't want profiteers we have to find a way to code it out. If we manage to code out what you call profiteering successfully we'll have to live with the consequences.

I guarantee you those consequences will be a bloodletting of investors and a lack of future ones too. You simply cannot drum self-interest out of the human organism, it's what caused us to get to 2019. Have you seen the movie firefly? They tried to fix the human condition and only ended up making it 100 times worse. I won't spoil it for you, just in case you haven't seen it.