yes it's a game theoretical problem, but I don't see a win here. If everybody sold their votes, steem is worth very little due to the system being undermined. Unfortunately, selling your vote from the individual perspective is the best case scenario for themselves, either others do it too and you all lose, or a few suckers try to carry it and you free ride. Classic prisoner's dilemma
the voting market is an inevitable and unfortunate consequence of the rewards system which isn't really flawed. Granting this, I don't think it's a false dichotomy. It's not so much as if people don't agree that my content is worth $30. It's is that $30 better off going into traf's content, or vote buyer's content really.
I can't afford to make less than doing nothing, which is pretty much where I'm at already.
If everybody sold their votes, Steem would be worth very little. Short term thinking from the individual perspective is what's bringing Steem down, it's not the best scenario, not even for vote sellers or buyers themselves.
If everybody would spend a great amount of time finding the greatest content and upvote it accordingly, Steem would be worth a LOT soon. If you don't have the time, then sponsor (trail following or SP delegating) a curation group that reflects your perspective on quality.
Here's the win.
Prisoner's Dilemma is one scenario in isolation, with nothing following. Steem is a system where your outcomes can be affected by other voters on an ongoing basis. That's true for both selfish voting and vote selling (sold votes can be countered the same way self votes can).
The system depends on those with the largest stake countering those who act selfishly with lower stakes. Those people have the least to gain from self voting (they are only taking from themselves) and the most to lose. Under such a paradigm selfishness is no longer the most profitable approach. People like @berniesanders and @transisto downvoting smaller players are rationally protecting their investment and changing the 'game theory' math for smaller stakeholders like you and me.
Well, a lot very much depends on a handful of individual's ability to discern the market value of things, for they dictate it, I hope for my sake too that they get it right and don't ever undervalue something
It won't take anywhere near that much for me to stop producing content of course, the economic incentive isn't there, at least not for someone with my limited ability.
Thank you for your input demotruk, appreciate it