Hi @inertia, I'm a collaborator with @l0k1 AKA @elfspice on this so I'll join in a little here.
If I number you points of contention, I would say #2 (arrogance) is subjective, #4 (spam scaling prob) needs research and #5 (appearance of scam) is speculative so I won't address them.
The other two though I will:
#1 - self voting is about peer review
While it's true that the bottom line will always be we are free to use our stake as we please (I'm a strong supporter of this), for me this point questions the validity of self voting being allowed as it is post-HF 19. It's clear that self voting is more rewarding since HF 19 so this is a problem, so much so that people are overly incentivized to vote for themselves over others.
Our position on this is supported by the whitepaper and while I am not confident I can say what the "culture" of Steemit is, "peer review" is certainly something which I wish to maintain.
From the whitepaper:
The challenge faced by Steem is deriving an algorithm for scoring individual contributions that most community members consider to be a fair assessment of the subjective value of each contribution. In a perfect world, community members would cooperate to rate each other’s contribution and derive a fair compensation. In the real world, algorithms must be designed in such a manner that they are resistant to intentional manipulation for profit. Any widespread abuse of the scoring system could cause community members to lose faith in the perceived fairness of the economic system.
So while we can pressure people socially to follow this, the incentives have to be there, and that's the problem that needs to be addressed. Whether you listen or not to the rationale @l0k1 makes before such a change is your business as your stake is always yours. But we are promoting the idea of a system level correction.
#3 spam adds entropy
I agree the usage of the term "entropy" here is quite opaque. It refers to Shannon's information theory, where entropy is maximum when all outcomes of an information producing machine are equally likely. So I guess he is saying that spam is self similar information, and so adds entropy, because the more of it there is the more probable the next piece of information produced on the blockchain is similar.
But this point needs to be developed and I invite @elfspice to do so.
I believe peer-review is a fine interpretation, but it's also an indirect, emergent property of the protocol, not the direct intent.
Does this mean you advocate some kind of on-chain policing of self-votes?
It is the intent, this is clear from the whitepaper. No it's not direct as such, as emergent properties can be planned. Look at any complex system simulation of ants for an example.
of a committee would be like that. It's not something that I think would work, better to realign the rules to encourage the emergent positivity and mutual benefit.I don't know what kind of on chain policing there could be, but I would oppose anything that is not a general rule. Maybe something like @edje 's idea
here but I think point 13 is a really interesting idea to reduce the effectiveness of self voting and so-called "circle jerk" behavior, via incentives as opposed to policing.I'm not sure if you read @rycharde 's post
I have to agree with you that Steem Inc founding members and miners have too much control over both who witnesses are and where rewards go (including presumably back to themselves, though will wait for data on that claim). I believe this happened in HF 17/18 where Ned swooped in and changed his witness votes depending on who was adopting the HF.
corruption, at least at the highest level of stakeholding.While it's totally fine to use your votes however, this kind of concentration of power makes the idea that Steem as a DAO a farce. @demotruk maybe you were right about the idea that voting can be
Interesting view. Do you think that the Steem price will move to zero over the next 2 months? If so, what's your mechanism for betting against it?
Thanks for the info, and good luck with your general plans. Although I rather hope you're mistaken regarding the intentions behind, and the fate of Steem and other cryptocurrencies.
I've considered this kind of thing myself, but in nothing like such depth. It does seem unlikely that open blockchains would have been allowed to flourish unless they were 'under control'. I'd be interested in any links you have to help confirm or refute your hypothesis, and if you write a book/paper at some stage, I'd like to read it.
Are you anonymous, or do you have a public web presence?
This is very interesting. My father who passed away talked about this and I always thought he was the only one who thought this way and was possibly losing his mind. Always keep a little gold on hand.