I hope that this Hard Fork (HF21) improves Steem. I wanted to tell you what I think about this new fork. Click here to find out what hard forks are. A hard fork is like a blockchain upgrade. I can talk for days about everything. Here is a quick summary of some my thoughts. I've included some links to some of that.

Hard Fork 21

04:30 PM - Steemit

Super-Majority:

I can talk for days. I like how forks seem to work if there is a super majority, a consensus between the witnesses.

Steemit Republic

Instead of being merely a mob-ruling democracy, the Steem Witness System appears to be like an electronic constitutional (blockchain) republic to some extent I'm hoping which I prefer and we do better as we try to go that direction as humans.

Western Civilization

I promote free markets and I promote walls, borders, countries. Family First. Community First. Country First. Having two Steem pools might be better. I'm skeptical but it may help a little. The 50-50 reward balance between content curators and authors may encourage increased engagement, activity, where people may curate more and may share (resteem) or retweet more. So, long story short, some things might be improving with Hard Fork 21 (HF21). I love the way that Hard Fork is explained here in this article on Steemit. I'm Oatmeal. Good work.

Governing Steem

04:59 PM - Steemit

Steem could be policed from a central committee of moderators like Facebook does. We have that with the tech cartels. Steem could be policed, however, through a decentralized Wild Wild West. Downvoting is flagging. You can leave a comment stating why you flagged something.

Downvote Pool

As people downvote, will their downvote power and weight increase and will this second pool grow and grow, is my question. I'm guessing that if people are paid money to downvote, and if that secondary pool is not just merely Resource Credit (RC) manna, and if the downvote grows and grows, then that is potential flaw in Steem. But if this second pool is fixed, then that might be less dangerous.

Downvoting

I don't downvote. So, I don't promote that. So, you're right that we shouldn't be flagging each other like you said. Yes, decreasing author rewards down to 50% is dangerous. It might promote more interaction, engagement. However, it is risky. It is dangerous. I'm hoping things improve. I'm crossing my fingers. Hard Fork 22 might be undoing some of these things. If these things don't really work, we should revert some of these back to HF20.

Free Market

I believe in the free market. Specifically, the market can be crazy. Some people have a lot of money. Some people may be very poor. I believe in the system, generally speaking. I believe in freedoms. So, I believe in letting run around wild doing good and bad. So, we see a wide variety of content with variations of quality and quantity. Generally, quality can be measured subjectively, generally speaking. Of course, objectivity is real. But too often, people are judging quality from a point irrationality, because humans are full of bias, preference, perspectives, paradigms, beliefs, feelings, as we are not perfect. Now, hypothetically, if we were perfect, if we knew everything, then we would be able to rate the level of quality objectively. I believe in freedom over safety. I believe in smaller government. Have a lovely day. Oatmeal.

Free Market

Value is determined by supply and demand, right?

Flagging System

05:13 PM - Steemit

I do admire this flagging system to the extent it discourages spam, theft, hate speech, etc. Like you said, our perception of things can be subjective as we are humans. So, it might be a question of whether we want a centralized governing body police us or if we would rather attempt to decentralize that policing system. If the policing system can mirror a decentralized, constitutional (blockchain) republic (Steem), if it could seek after three or four branches of governments in Steem, then that might be better. I don't downvote. I don't promote flagging. I promote voting on what we like. I like something, I upvote it. I ignore other things. I don't have time to downvote. But I understand why people downvote. To some extent, I feel tempted to maybe downvote sometimes. So, it might be a better choice to sometimes downvote sometimes. I understand that. Have a good day.

Steem vs Facebook

05:19 PM - Steemit

I like what you wrote. My favorite part is the comparison between Steem and the ghetto tech cartel Hell-Holes, places like Facebook, empires that earn billions of dollars annually and they're not sharing a single penny of that as we are the product(s) that they trade. Steem is an example of an alternative. We also have Minds, etc.

Copyright Cookies

06:05 PM - Steemit

Yeah, people might downvote you for any reason. I upvoted this post. So, the best you can do is hope you have more friends than you have enemies. Specifically, I might argue that quoting a poem from Queen Mary of Scots is protected by Fair Use and possibly other things. Technically, there may be no copyright on that any longer. But even if there is copyright, there is also Fair Use. But regardless, people downvote. People flag things. I don't like flagging. I love cookies and oatmeal hehe.

Encouragement

06:32 PM - Steemit

Possibly the most important factor, like you said, is encouraging more curation by giving them 50% rewards. To some extent, potentially, that decentralizes the curation system. It gets more people involved in curating. That helps curators and it more importantly helps content creators.

Centralized Users

A single account may now only get 50% in rewards, in HF21, which is less than 75%, which we had before.

Mathematical Magic

Yet, ironically, mathematically, curation is like a funnel. The single user is a central point. Instead of increase the smaller end of the funnel (posting rewards), theoretically, expanding the other end of the funnel (curation) has the potential towards expansion. I have my fingers crossed for this new hard fork.

Content Creators

Some might argue that content creators, to some extent, might be like employers. Imagine allowing employers 50% profits. I like that. Some might say that's too much. But before HF21, it was at 75%. So, this might be a step in the right direction. And other people argue that it should remain at 75% or more. I understand their concerns. But mathematically, the curators are like the employees. They upvote the content that is provided by content creators (employers). If you give a thousand curators more money, then they might curate more. And 50% of that goes to the employer. More curation means more votes. And more votes means more money for the central users. So, in theory, this will improve the Steem system. Mathematically, it's easy to understand the funnel system. I hope this second pool, the downvoting system, helps as well.

Investing Advice

06:44 PM - Steemit

Diversify your portfolio. Invest in many things. Don't keep all your eggs in one basket.

Dapp Game Changer

06:51 PM - Steemit

There's an Dapp for that. Just kidding but there should be apps that are developed on Steem, if there aren't already, that has premium features and pay per play and pay per view and all kinds of things like you said perhaps, a real game changer.

@Steevc's thoughts on HF21

Luke Stokes' thoughts on HF21