As we see that folks are milking curation rewards as simply a mechanism for extracting rent from their stake, adding flags to the mechanisms they can do that with is certain to be similarly abused. Further, @freddio pointed out that voters mutually flagging and upvoting would both extract curation rewards, and this would bollux the rewards mechanism.
Presently, flagging is a negative curation reward, which then returns Steem to the pool (before it leaves the pool at all, yeah). @yabapmatt's proposal would instead reward those ostensibly curative flags and increase the draw on the inflation pool. In many cases today, in the flagwar you mention, up and down votes cancel each other out (or at least eliminate author and curation rewards altogether, since they cannot be negative (although.... )).
Even if there's a separate pool for flag rewards, it would still draw from the source: inflation. So a post that has been reduced to zero rewards for the author would still produce rewards for the voters - creating 100% curation rewards.
Whaddya say @yabapmatt?
Hey, @valued-customer.
First of all, I'm glad you and I see things the same way, though you have a better way of expressing it. Right or wrong, it's nice to see someone else express your own thoughts and concerns.
Secondly, it would be nice if all of this could be taken to the testnet, or wherever so that it could be tried out. It seems like we have here a bunch of different ideas, that in spite of what their motivations may be, are being expressed as "this is what will happen" when it's impossible for it all to result in all the ways each of us say it will. Someone has to be right, and someone wrong, and I'd like to prove it, once and for all.
I've read what edicted and you have both posted individually, and of the proposals that I've found so far, I like the idea of choosing your own curation rewards over getting rid of them entirely (though I do understand the reasoning and believe that we are not incentivizing curating quality content as is), but I would still want to hash it out, test it out, too.
The problem with all of this is, we tend to look at what it could do if people behave certain ways, while glossing over what they're most likely to do, and that's to either act in their own self interests, go the path of least resistance, or find some other way around it just for fun—to prove it can be done.
I don't think any of those scenarios are what we really want, if we can all avoid it.
You are exactly correct, and yet even the testnet doesn't accurately represent what people will do when their real funds are at risk. There's no better mechanism to do those tests, but tests cannot actually add money to, or take it out of your wallet and impact the rent you pay, the food you buy, or your actual financial situation.
What is obvious to me is what has been the result of people's financial interests, and that has been that folks most intent on their finances gain financial rewards most. As this process cascades, the other values society provides are increasingly diminished until those values no longer make the society of requisite value, and inevitably this fact then causes the economic value of that society to vanish as well, since it only has any value in society.
Piles of money in a cave have no value at all, absent a viable society to spend them in.
Sound economics isn't theoretical, but demonstrated by historical results. For millenia capital gains have proven to be sound incentive for investors, and yet Steem has continually been made less productive of capital gains and more productive of extractive profiteering, until we now observe the marketcap of Steem declining in a rising market. A student of economic history will not be unfamiliar with this circumstance, nor of what comes next if the problem continues to grow worse. Economic collapse is repeatedly revealed in the historical record.
The solution is to reverse those incentives for extractive rapine, and implement incentives to imbue the investment vehicle with growing value that produce capital gains. Doubling the extraction of curation rewards but hastens the decline. Only creating incentive that enables substantial stakeholders to attain profits by creating development that produce capital gains will reverse that decline.
Thanks!