While we are talking about game theory, why is the obvious counter strategy not to simply split your extremely large stake into two extremely large stakes, doubling the number of witness votes that you can use backed by what is effectively still orders of magnitude more SP than people even a little bit down the curve?
When I was doing visualizations of SP distribution throughout the Steemit user population, the power curve was incredibly steep. Hyper-logarithmic. With the relative ease of setting up new accounts and staking them now, what would keep accounts with large stake from simply splitting into a group of nodes of smaller stake but coordinated voting?
And then we would end up exactly the same place we are now, but everybody's weight of SP would be spread just a little bit thinner.
The problem with systems like this is that they are trying to imagine that things could work differently than they are given very much the same axioms. The problem is not "insufficient democracy." The problem is "Proof of Stake." The entirety of the blockchain and the way that the system allocates resources is based purely and completely on who has the most stake lodged in the database, and not only is it far better (from the perspective of the algorithm and the creators) for you to have acquired that stake by purchasing it with fiat currency and then simply keeping it unmoving in the blockchain, it is the recommended methodology. Publicly!
This is the problem. This is the very core of the problem. It is also this strong selling point of the platform.
"All pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others."
Same answer, No, splitting the stake up won't help at all, then you get twice the quantity of votes with half of the quantity of impact. This way you reduce your influence and not grow it.
If you split up your stake you probably won't be able to elect any top 20 witnesses. So you'll probably elect 20 top 60 witnesses which doesn't help you a lot.
120mv distributed in 10 votes = 120mv each vote.
120mv distributed in 20 votes (if its 10 votes per account) would be 60mv each vote.
But it reduces the slide each of the people get, that's the entire point I'm making.
I really don't get your point.
Right now everyone has 30 witness votes. Where each witness vote is worth the full vests the account has. Let's denominate this as "x" vests.
If the account only voted 1 witness, this witness would also only get one vote worth x-mv, thus, he should vote 30 times since this way he is able to distribute 30 x-mv in votes.
If we restrict his power to 10 votes, he will be able to vote 10 x-mv in votes.
And if he splits this up, it's not worth it.
The total quantity the account is able to vote is 10 x-mv, or 20 x x/2-mv or 40 x x/4-mv, but the more the account splits it, the more difficult it will be to make the vote decide who is in the top 20.