Actually, I think you’re mistaken.
As I mentioned in my comment, these calculations scale to any size account. In fact, when you have a smaller upvote value (say, $0.10) it is easier to earn a greater multiplier on your curation reward by voting on a post before a whale votes.
What I mean by this is the following: a small curator casting a vote - even if it’s as little as $0.01 - would earn 2x, 3x or even 8x their upvote value if they upvote a piece of content before a whale.
There are far more content curators than content creators and increasing the incentive for people to upvote unknown posts would help both the smaller content curators as well as the smaller content creators.
The issue we have is with that of behavior patterns - right now, the incentive to self-vote is much higher than to upvote a high quality piece of content. As you can see in my original comment and chart #1.
I also mentioned that extensive testing is needed before any change should ever be made. However, I’ve spent a lot of time calculating curation rewards and trust me - this would help small curators even more so than “whale” curators. Which means that everyone has a greater incentive not to self-vote and thus, the proper intention of good content being discovered and rising to the top could possibly be restored - again, extensive testing required!!!
"There are far more content curators than content creators and increasing the incentive for people to upvote unknown posts would help both the smaller content curators as well as the smaller content creators."
This is only true for smaller curation happenings. But they are not the main accounts empowering people. Today I got a 7777 SP delegation from nathanmars. He is on team content creators. He is putting stake behind what he does.
This is what will make this ecosystem grow. Not selfish 50% curation systems. There are very few high curation sources that matters. There are more content creators that matters. As they have limitless amount of new content. This is what draws in new humans in the system.
"The issue we have is with that of behavior patterns - right now, the incentive to self-vote is much higher than to upvote a high quality piece of content. As you can see in my original comment and chart #1."
This is not true at all. The highest ROI is to invest in Trust and Relationships. Yes it would help small curators in the short term. But it would not empower content creators in the long run. Especially if they want to have massive future influence. Since they have no leverage. This can already be seen in Socialist countries with 50% tax. It doesn't give incentive for anyone to create amazing content. It would encourage fast content with low effort.
Content creators are the main authority, next comes Stake holders and then comes advertisers. If you value content creators at the top, curators second and advertisers third then a network can grow. But if you value curators above content then you mess up the whole ecosystem.
People that currently isn't in thriving mode will never thrive magically with a change. Since lazy stay lazy. @lordbutterfly has pointed out in excellent posts why 50/50 will not work.
It will only work if you think that small curators are the future of a content network. But they are not producing new stuff.
Again, I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I have taken no sides in the debate of what should be implemented and changed on the blockchain.
Let me continue that role by saying this: nathanmars is doing incredible work and there are a few others like him who are empowering fellow creators like yourself, however: that is not a scalable model.
What you're hoping for is a perfect world where people who have abundance are willing to share that abundance with others. I wish it were otherwise, but it simply is not human nature to act in accordance to those principles.
The ecosystem will not grow (in my opinion) to the scale that we all want to see it grow to through actions like those. Yes, they are highly beneficial on the micro level and I hope that more people stand up and do similar initiatives, but it is simply to big of an ask to get people on board with those kinds of activities.
Thus, you run yourself back to the initial idea of Steem and upvoting --> the idea behind the Steem ecosystem and the rewards pool and what not was all designed for people to spread their upvotes to others to both reward themselves (through curation) as well as to reward their fellow humans.
Believe me - if you can incentivize people to reward themselves AND reward fellow creators, then my friend, you are in business!
You don't have to believe me though, you can see how this all played out on the Steem blockchain in its current state: are the majority of people self-voting and delegating to bots or are they acting against their own interests and delegating SP at no profitability to creators such as yourself? The answer is obvious, I'm afraid.
Again, I don't know if setting a 50/50 split would solve these issues and I actually believe that it wouldn't - only that it is a worthwhile pursuit to at least consider the possibilities and run tests and experiments.
Now, I'll give you my person position --> I believe that SMTs will fragment the Steem blockchain into a bunch of smaller communities which will serve to solve the issues of incentivizing people to both earn the maximum reward for themselves while simultaneously rewarding their fellow creators. I just wrote a post on this exact idea, if you want to give it a read.
Again, I'm totally with you and I wish the world were as we hoped it would be - everyone helps each other in a completely selfless way and we all rise to the top together, but we unfortunately do not have such a perfect world.
That's why I believe these smaller communities will form with their own economic models that will far exceed anything like what we see now happening on the blockchain ---> that is how we scale the unscalable: by bringing the macro back down to the micro level!!!
Thx for a good reply,
"Let me continue that role by saying this: nathanmars is doing incredible work and there are a few others like him who are empowering fellow creators like yourself, however: that is not a scalable model."
Well it is actually scalable. Empower people and magic happens in the long run. Investing in others is a scalable model. History has proven that the last 100 years.
"What you're hoping for is a perfect world where people who have abundance are willing to share that abundance with others. I wish it were otherwise, but it simply is not human nature to act in accordance to those principles."
If you take a look the last 100 years you can again see that abundance has gone up. And people are sharing it. Most places that have a more capitalist approach and not socialist approach are creating massive freedom. Life is still competition though.
"Believe me - if you can incentivize people to reward themselves AND reward fellow creators, then my friend, you are in business!"
Content creators are already doing this on the Steem Blockchain. And it works.
Well I'm with you that I think experiments will be done with Smart Media Tokens. And that it will create all kinds of results