"As always I appreciate your considered and substantive discussion. I have to admit I am frustrated by apparent intransigence, which I assume, rather than recognize that other people have had other experiences which lead them to different conclusions. I apologize for that frustration, and thank you for your tolerance."

The frustration is mutual, and I too; thank you.

"Most folks do usually get something from a post. Last I looked the median payout is .04 SBD. While negligible, it's payment. It's not something you get from legacy social media platforms, and all else being equal, should be a significant incentive to post here."

Negligible, as defined at dictionary.com is: "So small, trifling, or unimportant that it may safely be neglected or disregarded." It appears you are willing to give the median payout some regard, even though it is as you say negligible. Is this another way of conceding that remuneration is not what the average quality content producer is receiving?

"Let me again show how this pushes the price of Steem down. The market for something is what assigns it's value. Self voting does not stimulate that market. It does the reverse: takes rewards that are intended to do so, as the OP reveals is the original intent of the devs, and sequesters them in the wallets of substantial stakeholders. I have referred to this as playing keep away with rewards, and users are discouraged by this behaviour. This drives away users, and decreases the size of the market. That reduces the number of bids for Steem, which reduces the upwards price pressure on Steem. Lower demand = lower price. This is the primary mechanism by which self voting, and all stake weighting manipulation, reduces the price of Steem.

It is contrary to the intent of the original conception of the devs of Steem, which was to reward content creators to encourage them to continue to market Steem by posting good content. Those posts are the word of mouth that brought us all to Steem. The payouts creators receive are the essential work product that is purchased by new users coming here. That is the payment for content engendered by author rewards: new users.

More users increases the number of bids, increasing demand, which increases price of Steem.

It is the reversal of this marketing mechanism by which profiteering lowers the price of Steem. Payouts to creators, whether substantially staked or not, encourages them to create content that increases the size of the market, which raises the price of Steem. However, by manipulating the rewards mechanism through stake weighting the rewards of authors are primarily extracted by substantially staked users - whales - and this reduces the incentive to creators to create, including and especially those substantially staked - which reduces the content created, reducing marketing, which reduces growth of the market, reducing price pressure.

In fact the terrible user retention exacerbates this negative price pressure, as new users that come here do not stay, and demand that once existed is reduced further, further decreasing upwards price pressure on Steem. 95% of users leave. The demand for Steem they produced leaves with them.

The only thing that gives value to Steem is demand. The solitary source of demand is the market, primarily users of Steem social media."

Okay, I think we've determined that remuneration for quality content in most cases is not happening here. At best, the rewards are negligible. That said, If I'm a large stakeholder who also produces quality content, I'm empowered to correct that problem for not only myself but others too. I do not agree that this is manipulation but rather a stake-weighted rectification in a system that seems to operate without any rhyme or reason.

"I provided examples of profiteering and investing for capital gains in legacy fiat markets. Two specific companies I named are Berkshire Hathaway and Bain Capital Partners. If you research these companies, widely known in investing circles, you will observe opposing business models.

Both companies seek undervalued companies, as all investors generally do. However, since a company is undervalued BCP simply sells off those undervalued assets at market value, and profits thereby. This is known as a hostile takeover, and BCP leaves a trail of defunct companies in it's wake. Other investors in those companies are not rewarded, since BCP purchases a controlling stake in the company which enables them to vote themselves all the proceeds of selling off the parts rather than equally sharing them with other equity holders. Of course this results in legal actions, which BCP drags out for decades and is simply a cost of doing business for them, which the time value of money reduces the more they can delay judicial resolution of tort actions.

I pointed out that this leaves employees out of jobs, pensions worthless (BCP simply defunds them), the communities out of the economic stimulus the unemployed no longer provide in taxes and purchasing power, clients searching for alternative suppliers, all in addition to the tort suffered by other investors.

Berkshire Hathaway, in contrast, does not sell off the forges and presses of the companies they buy, but instead improve whatever has caused the companies to be undervalued, increasing the proceeds of doing business with those assets. They profit considerably more than BCP, and Warren Buffet, who long lead Berkshire Hathaway, famously became the wealthiest man in the world by doing so.

The effect on society of BH investing for capital gains is entirely positive, in contrast to the destruction wrought by BCP. Employees get raises as they produce more revenue for the company. Clients are better served by the improved business practices BH undertakes to increase revenue and raise the value of the company. Communities receive greater tax revenue, and increased spending power of the employees. Warren Buffet famously remarked that he would prefer to never sell stock at all. BCP sells stock it has stripped of value for anything it can get, because it has used that equity to mine the value out of the company already.

This is the difference between profiteering, BCP, and investing for capital gains, BH. The former destroys companies and does this by extracting the value produced by business undertakings instead of allowing that value to remain in the token (stock), stuff it into their pockets. On Steem, the forges and presses creating value are the content creators, which cannot be sold. However, stake weighting enables profiteers to extract rewards for content into their own wallets. The only reason Steem still exists is that content creators cannot be sold directly by whales profiteering, and whales have only managed to extract ~90% of the value rather than eliminate it's source at a momentary profit.

This profiteering self voting exemplifies on Steem is destructive of capital gains, the community, and the content produced by the platform itself, resulting in trending being a pile of trash.

I am not going to bother detailing the positive effects of investing for capital gains again, as I hope that you will grasp from the above explanation of profiteering that the opposite effects are produced by the BH business model on Steem.

This is the central pillar of investing. Experienced investors have seen both models in operation. Steem is increasingly being optimized for profiteering, and investors know damn well it will not produce capital gains. Substantially staked investors are diversified. They have multiple investments and spend significant time managing their treasure, so stick to their knitting. They generally don't have a lot of time to read shitposts, or undertake to practice multiple business models, which learning how to shitpost and self vote, or the myriad stake weighting mechanisms on Steem. Substantial investors are doing well today. The stock market is reaching new highs all the time, QE is ongoing, and capital gains are trivial to attain for those that understand the market. Greg Mannerino can improve your grasp of investing in fiat markets if you want to know more.

Why should anyone with significant money decide to begin profiteering for chump change on Steem when what they're doing already is more financially rewarding, how they already do business, and based on an experience base so ancient it predates history itself? No reasonable investors come here, for these reasons, amongst others. Exceptions to the rule exist, and some people just want to profiteer because it suits their personality.

Profiteering and investing are opposites. One destroys, one builds. Your example of a business owner does not reflect the actual market. Such a business owner is an exception to the rule, perhaps seeking to retire, or staving off a hostile takeover from a similar profiteering entity to BCP."

This is a very detailed answer, and I’m not sure that I can make all the same correlations and connections to Steem as you do. In the highlighted portion of your response, it seems as if though you disagree that large stakeholders are sometimes also quality content creators. Perhaps in businesses and corporations, it is seldom that the owner is putting in a 9-5 and collecting a paycheck. However, on Steem, many large stakeholders are also doing exceptionally quality posts. With stake-weighting, they can fix undervalued posts for not only themselves but also for others too. Are you suggesting that they shouldn't fix under-rewarded posts or just their own?

"The YOY retention issue has existed since Steem began, and is a direct result of the profiteering of the ninjaminers. During the BTC bubble it was about ~7.5%, meaning that 93.5% of users left. It's worse now, and gets worse every time a HF increases the ability to stake to extract rewards. You speculate on the matter because you have not researched it. @paulag undertook to publish the data, which I attended to when she did in 2017. The data is extant yet on the blockchain and you can review it at your leisure.

Profiteering vs. Investing. That's the whole of the issue in a nutshell.

You know that if 1 + 1 = 2 then 2 = 1 + 1. Math is just language. Words have the same effect."

Hmm, I wonder if paulag's research highlights just how drastically the deflation of the BTC bubble affected the steem retention rate overall. Do you know if he investigated that factor?

"I didn't misunderstand this. It's false. I am proof of that. Since you continue to stick by it, you continue to stick by something factually incorrect. If you want to be factually correct, you will have to change your mind. If you stick by what you said, you will remain factually incorrect.

You do you."

Again, the "they" I was referencing was self-voters. I am a self-voter; however, I do not always vote for myself. So, when I post a video with no added content, I tend to decline payout, and this is because there is no work I added to it. However, as a self-voter, when I produce something I am proud of, I vote myself up. It is because I am a self-voter who has self-esteem, and I take pride in my work but not all of my posts. I can't even pretend to imagine why non-self-voters, especially those with large stake, do not reward their quality content. If I had to guess, it's an exercise of sheer masochism, cognitive distortions, or perhaps they think they're being altruistic and want to force everyone else into the same behavior trait. I'm sure there is a myriad of reasons why non-self-voters do not self-vote. As for you specifically, you seem to have a very intricate worldview, some of which I do not understand, and some of which I do not comprehend.