Unless you're part of the cool kids, you've probably felt this:
It can seem frustrating and unfair. "What gives? My post was awesome... that other one was crap!"
Shall we shed some light on this? My hope is that this post won't just help you understand Steemit but how the entire world works. Pretty bold statement but hear me out and life will seem better, make more sense and you get to stop being a victim - Oh lucky you!
The Labour Theory of Value
Uh-oh.. not another australian ecomonics post. Fear not young ones! T'will be brief.
The labor theory of value argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of labor required to produce it, rather than by the use or pleasure its owner gets from it (Go wiki!). In other words it's the idea that because you worked hard, you should be rewarded lots. But when we talk about trade, it's all about what other humans are willing to give in exchange for your good/service.
To give a simple example, say I spend my Sunday afternoon driving around my county to scrape up roadkill to make a Kanye West statue out of it all. Should I be paid for this labor? Hey! I spent hours of my day in the hot sun where I lost 5 pounds of water from all the sweating I've been doing. I demand fair compensation! No fair that my mom made 50$ off of making a tea-cozy while watching her favorite sit-com in her airconditioned house next to a purring fluffy cat.
Let me put it another way, smbc-comics style:
Steem(it) is no different. Sorry, Marxism isn't magically valid all of a sudden. People don't care how much effort you put into a post, they care only about what they get out of it. What value does your post bring them? (Does the occasional bold font help get my point across?)
If a makeup tutorial brightened your day, then upvote it. Whether it's because you found it useful, you like seeing girls, you are happy someone is bringing different people to the platform, or you simply hate men (shit I dunno). The reason doesn't matter! The upvoters are shareholders just like you and can do what they want with their own property!
Human Nature
The first pic in this post was modified from one that displayed the number of Facebook status update likes. This type of stuff isn't new or unique to Steemit. It's a side effect of our monkey brains. Don't waste your energy raging against it, you'll just spread negativity around, cut a guy off in traffic and force him to beat his wife and kids to let off steam. That's on you now, good job. Instead you can feel awesome and useful by finding logical solutions to the problem. Wishing the problem away or bitching about it won't change a thing, unless you're into domestic abuse of course. Simple solutions include
- Don't join the hype
- Don't partake in "sport voting"
- Use the flag button freely (aka downvoting) and don't feel bad about it
- Think up ideas to improve the platform and post them to steemit - remember Steem and Steemit are FAR from their final iterations
But:
Growing Pains
Keep in mind that what you see here is one month old! The first payouts and real influx of users began on July 4th 2016.
More and more people are discovering the epicness and potential that is Steem(it). It is becoming obvious to most that as the platform gains in popularity, the variety of both content topics and voter preferences is on the rise.
With every single user jumping on board Steemit (requiring STEEM in the process) we see power get distributed.
The main objection is still the whales (users that have a huuuuuuge amount of SteemPower) but rest assured that even their power is being lowered every passing day. Even without selling a single share of Steem, their power is being proportionally diminished. It's only a matter of time before they start selling some of their stake since...
Everyone has a price
Whales are sitting on a large number of STEEM... good for them! They saw value before others, believed in the idea and helped support the launch of this revolutionary platform. Without early adopters having the incentive that comes from mad reward$, few would have been willing to spend their own money on STEEM and become so vocal about it. (If you are reading this, odds are someone with STEEM told you about it directly or indirectly)
Power will be further distributed as whales cash out some of their shares (STEEM) and reap the rewards of their investment. Every time the market price of STEEM rises, some whales are tempted to cash out a % of their holdings.
We've seen this with Bitcoin already. Once the price hit a dollar, people sold thousands of BTC and "made out like bandits". Some of them have been kicking themselves for not holding on for longer, but it's only by selling off some of their bitcoins that they could get more people on board the system and grow the network. Every time Bitcoin rose in value, the same thing happened, how many BTC whales do you see today?
Understand that when one whale cashes out, it's not just one person cashing in. It can be thousands of users jumping on board... each of which now has stake in the ecosystem. We gain new promoters, new upvoters, new bloggers and commenters.
Everyone has a price. You see some whales with thousands of STEEM now, but as the price rises, it will eventually hit a price they are willing to sell at.
Want to see whales disappear? Promote the shit out of Steem(it) and help us all make STEEM rise on www.coinmarketcap.com
Managing Expectation
I'd like to end on this note.
If you are mad that your post only made a dollar. Take a step back, look at how much you earn for your facebook status updates. Is it zero? Pretty sure it's zero... Now think back to how much you were paid for signing up to Facebook. Was it $10 (now $7) worth of crypto-stock that can skyrocket in the coming years? Pretty sure that's also a No. With Facebook, you are the product, your data is mined and sold off to the highest bidder, with Steem(it) it's not.
So next time you post on Steemit and receive anything above zero dollars (+have to give away your private info) be thankful!
TL;DR = 2m to 2:30 mark:
