I write this knowing very well that I will be attacked and further excluded from everything in the blockchain, but it needs to be said.
I have a penchant for telling the truth, especially when it does not serve me well to do so. That is who I am. For as long as I can remember people have called me “antisocial” (and do so having no idea what the term actually means outside of the American pharmaceutical industry, nor the suffering caused with it) but the truth is that I have no ability to act like something I’m not. I’m as genuine as they come and you probably won’t like me.
First and foremost, I will say that even though the majority of Venezuelans hate me with a passion, (and for the most part, with a few exceptions, it is reciprocated) I really don’t mean any harm by this post. There are cultural differences between us that go directly against my morals and I will not accept it, nor will they ever choose to see it from my perspective. But this post concerns them, among many others. In the end, we are from the same ruined empire and one people, cultural differences aside.
With all sincerity I encourage you to stop reading right now: especially if your username bears any resemblance to sharkyshark, wernie, nervantes or faggroed. You are going to be offended by what I have to say.
The greed on the two blockchains has gotten out of hand. There is little to no regard for basic decency, morality or business ethics. The amount of whining about supposedly being disenfranchised, while pandering for investors to put their money into an unproven and uninsured electronic monetary system, while displaying the classic narcissistic “us vs them” mentality against any who asks any type of questions, as investors are apt to do...it’s disgusting.
When it comes to investors, all are equally important. The length of the string of numbers invested should not influence who is able to sway the conditions the market operates under. There is an abject ignorance in every facet to what value actually is. When someone has the ability to invest a large sum of money and not only expect but receive the benefit of the power of suggestion (and therefore alters the market substantially to benefit those who already have the ability to purchase more bandwidth) it becomes nothing more than political lobbying, a form of centralization. In relation to the person who only had $10 to invest and spent 2 years saving every token, this large number is nothing. The man who invests his only $10 gave more because he gave all he had. To influence and enact changes that zero out his investment is abhorrent and nothing more than theft. Considering the situation of some on the chain, I often wonder who has died as a result of this gamble.
Personally, I consider last year to be a “very bad” year for me financially. I brought home $33,500 in total, down almost 48% from the previous year. (I took a substantial pay cut in exchange for job security.) With the added bonus that my ex stole every penny I had, this number doesn’t sit well with me, but I have rectified this because I am an entrepreneur and have the liquid funds to do so. At this moment, half of my income is expendable. Using the AGI from 2019, that leaves me $16,750 in liquid cash. I am the average American, financially speaking. Run this in comparison to the average Venezuelan, who, if work is available, can expect to make $3 a month while owing $20 or more in rent, and yes this is real numbers, were I to invest $10 in a dapp, I would not feel any effect at all whereas the Venezuelan very well may die of malnutrition if circumstances or bad luck prevents any residual profit from that investment.
Why am I bringing this up? Because the Venezuelan invested more than me. While the developers may only see $10 from each account (in contrast to $5,000 and $10,000 from others, or $1,543 from me on all ends in the blockchain in the last 8 months) the numbers lie. As I said above, the man who invested his only $10 invested more- he invested everything, even potentially his life.
Those who spend large amounts do so because they have more and the ability to get more. The poor man who put his only $10 in and he has nothing but hope and hunger to drive him to trust in blind luck. It’s gambling.
And isn’t that what the blockchain is? We invest our money hoping someone who writes the code that operates the market isn’t watching and withdrawing after our investments raise the value of the currency. We hope for good luck. We hope for a whale to like what we have to say and give us an upvote. We hope that a thousand people with a one cent vote like what we post and vote accordingly. We hope that we get a $26 gold foil card as a reward for a quest in Splinterlands. We hope our level 3 cards aren’t continually matched against endless hordes of bots with level 5 and 6 everything, or a vastly overpowered card that wins battles by itself and only the rich can afford. We hope for an airdrop in Hive-Engine and Bittrex. We hope a certain witness doesn’t decide his micropenis and self hate are justification for months of harassment with daddy’s money, with the end result being an account unjustly driven into negative reputation. We hope someone will come to our aid when we are harassed by rich assholes.
But this isn’t what normally happens.
What if I told you that, normally, it isn’t that what you are doing is wrong, but that you go about it the wrong way?
As much as the spirit of capitalism is driven by entrepreneurship and the desire to prove your haters wrong, just as much, and maybe more of it is fueled by greed. When someone comes from a hard place or is born into wealth it seems to have a negative connotation attached to that person’s spirit. The poor man will cut the throats of the others also trying to survive in order to achieve his financial goals because he is afraid to fail because failure means death; and the rich man has never known what it is to be without, and has no concept of value or quantity, and becomes almost sociopathic in his attempt to obtain the entire market because the only way he can feel anything is by possessing it all. There are exceptions, as not all men are bad, but these are rare exceptions.
The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated this issue. The entire world has fallen on dark times and tyranny is bankrupting even the rich. Fear is overriding basic common sense, human decency and eroding the little morals that even sociopaths possess.
On one hand you have those who championed themselves as saints and ambassadors to the poor showing their true colors and proudly displaying their greed for all to see.
On the other hand the disenfranchised have developed a sense of entitlement and now shamelessly stick their cup in everyone’s face and demand support, and become angry when offered a change to work or asked basic questions about their request.
Each extreme breeds more contempt and blatant disregard for the shreds of decency remaining and both have become worse.
Where do we go now? Well, who knows? I’m going to go walk away from this account until you all can act like decent humans again. I was holding contests, not for the payout and votes I was receiving but because I saw the desperation of those in need and I have been poor and homeless and know very well that a handout humiliates as much as it provides sustinence. This was the reason for the contests, to feed the needy while giving them a way to earn it and feel great.
I stopped this because I received so much negativity from the disenfranchised (the “how dare you ask me if I’d like to participate” attitude while begging for free money) and the wealthy (creating identical contests while mine is running, in an attempt to profit from my idea and commandeer participants, in the fear that I might gain a following-again not my intent...blockchain data will prove I have never withdrawn a single penny) as well as derision, exclusion and insults that I have no desire to do any more of this activity. I don’t like feeling like shit, and that’s what steem/hive makes me feel.
Grow up.
This post can only trend if you have tons of Hive in your wallet which goes back to what you are saying. There's so much truth lying in your wordings. Sometimes you have to worship the whales before you get anything meaningful here. People come here and run before they even start. Not everyone that can afford $10 to invest to start with. Some much needs to be corrected here...
Where there is money there is drama, greed and thieving. And now there's panicking and even more of the rest. It's tiring. I've botted my splinter lands accounts and I'm ignoring it all.