The driving question behind the 50/50 decision is: who does SteemIt want as investors. I've read several whale accounts. They appear to want to bring Wall Street in as the primary ... just as Wall Street is the primary investor in the rest of social media.
The question is: How can we get Goldman Sachs to buy a million Steem. Not, how can SteemIt attract and retain a million users.
STEEM is a deflationary currency. The only way to get Goldman Sachs to buy a million STEEM would be to have mechanisms where Goldman Sachs can harvest a lion's share of the rewards pool.
Goldman Sachs could harvest the reward pool with bots and the new 50/50 reward pool.
SteemIt would could then scoff at the useful idiots who thought the company was trying to create something for the people, when they are looking for the first chance to sell to the 1%.
I spose you're right, but it doesn't have to go that way, and if it does, another UI will do what ordinary folks want to do, which isn't to heel to Goldman Sachs yanks on the choke chain, but to relate to one another freely.
SMTs may provide both directions of progress, without going off the Steem reservation. I don't know @ned and the Stinc team well enough to say they'll do this or that with confidence. I have discussed this a bit long ago with @ned briefly (offchain) and find him forthright and bright - at worst. While I can't predict what he'll do, he has kept his word to me, even though it was months later, and I had given up by then. I reckon he could grab all the cash he can and run, but I do suspect he has specific goals that aren't purely financial that he is intent on achieving.
I find it odd that so much depends on such fungible and ineffable things as principles, standards, and spine. It is literally impossible to imagine what the world may transition to if he personally holds a particular view, or doesn't. Even more odd, that's true for all of us, and we can't predict how we impact key personnel with our casual talk. A chance word can change the world forever. All I do know for sure is that he did, in time, fulfill a commitment he made to me, and while that's little to base a prediction on the future of social media on, it's a good sign.
Those that ask that question aren't looking past their own bank accounts. For them, cash is king. Warren Buffet would ask the latter question, because he's an investor, not a profiteer. @ned doesn't strike me as a profiteer, and his remarks in Korea last year show he's not merely an investor either. I hope he's a leader, and seeking to blaze a trail into a future where the people of the world can create communities at their sole option, and not need to buy from Goldman Sachs the privilege of joining theirs.
Thanks!
I started using SteemIt because I felt the platform was infused with youthful idealism. For the platform to maintain that ideal the platform has to figure out how to get a large number of people to have a moderate investment in STEEM POWER.
It is a tough game. I actually feel that there is a core of people in the company that has its eyes on larger communities and not just the price of STEEM. The investment bankers have knocked the idealism out of numerous computer companies in the past.