No it isn't purely that. It comes out of a very substantial reasoned process of looking at economic incentives as discussed in several posts by @kevinwong, among many other considerations and discussions (but the @kevinwong posts are easy to find and well-documented, so let's stick with that for now).
You may disagree with the conclusions after engaging in your own reasoning, and indeed the reasoning behind 50/50 helping to improve curation may be incorrect, but that doesn't make it purely wishful thinking. The process that has taken place indicates there is clearly a lot more behind it than that.
I'm familiar with Kevin's arguments and I think it's completely appropriate to describe them as wishful thinking combined with a healthy dose of wanting the system to be more profitable for Kevin. I was willing to give Wolf credit for not being in on the second one.
I doubt wolf is and I'm certainly not. There are well reasoned arguments there in terms of shifting and rebalancing incentives whether you recognize them or not.
I don't really understand why you think this would be good for kevin either. He's a successful poster and only a moderately large stakeholder/voter. Does he not personally benefit from higher author rewards, and have more at risk from cheaper downvotes? One could argue he would benefit from superlinear, I agree there.
There are no evidence-based arguments in Kevin's posts for the idea that increasing curation percentages will lead to more manual curation. There are some interesting arguments for other things, but that one is purely assertion.
Cause he flat-out argues that? He's talked a lot about how he views Steem economics as a "race to keep up," as if other people earning more money than him is a problem that needs to be fixed. This is his solution for solving what he perceives as other people's advantage over him in that "race." That's explicitly the problem that he has identified and is trying to fix.
Referring to 200,000 SP as "moderately large" is not encouraging me to think that you have any idea what the wealth distribution here and the problems associated with it are. There are only 78 non-Steemit accounts with more Steem than Kevin.
I’m sure there are plenty of old posts from 2016 that will likely mention the fact that manual curation took a nosedive when it was changed from 50/50 to 75/25. So there’s that.
But more importantly, since the only way to earn from your investment of STEEM is either through capital appreciation or curating, it clearly makes economic sense that ~doubling potential profits on your staked STEEM will make purchasing STEEM more attractive. With that potential doubling, I’m sure you’ll find some curators looking to maximize their returns through improved voting practices.
This isn’t a static environment and we shouldn’t assume that investment choices and behavior won’t change when incentives do. Real-world economics and the history of this blockchain have both demonstrated otherwise.
There's a whole lot of "it clearly makes economic sense" and not a whole lot of trying it. You have the freedom to try it.
Of self voting or vote selling
Right. And it appears that he would prefer self-voting and vote-selling as opposed to better curating.
But I should note that the reduced daily vote target and full linear rewards has contributed to increased self-voting as well. I know that linear is likely here to stay, but we can certainly increase the vote target to 20. Ten is far too low. A side-effect of increasing it would also likely be better distribution, since it would require voting on more posts in order to meet those daily targets.
Increasing curation rewards is just one piece of the puzzle, but it’s an important piece - and not just for content discovery/ranking. It potentially doubles the incentive to buy and power up STEEM. And right now, there doesn’t appear to be much that’s attractive to investors. Buying STEEM and holding SP is literally the most important aspect of the blockchain. That’s what makes any of this work.
How much harder is it to self vote 20 comments than 10, or to sell 20 votes than 10? I think hardly at all.
Maybe it makes a difference but I prefer to get a bit closer to the root causes.
Yes I agree on that.
You can not make evidence-based arguments without trying it in this sort of system, where external behavior in response to incentives is an essential part of what determines the outcomes. The only arguments that can be made are economic structural ones, or just "what the hell, let's try it an see". Failing that the only alternative is to never change anything. The arguments put forth by @kevinwong and @trafalgar are economic structural ones. That's the best we can possibly do.
Though, in a sense there is indeed a sort of evidence-based argument in that the observation of the status quo as undesirable bordering on unacceptable is an argument for changing it.
That is not the argument being made at all.
You did not understand his argument. People are making more by behaving in a manner that directs rewards to themselves rather than helping grow Steem. That's a problem for all of us.
The number of accounts isn't the point. I am not convinced he has more to gain as a curator than as a poster. If anything it would have to be fairly close.
Also, you can't meaningfully count that way. My Steem is split between thousands of accounts, and I'm sure I'm not alone. I don't recall if any of them have >200K. I think so but I'm not sure and the reality is that it doesn't matter at all. Accounts are not an economically meaningful unit.
More to the point there are certainly people with millions of Steem, at least 10-20x more than what Kevin appears to have (of course he may have other accounts too). That makes his apparent holdings moderate when considering things like curation rewards to be earned and the effects of superlinear proposals.
This one you're posting with has 365k. @smooth-a has 587k. I don't know what any of the others are but the fact that you've more or less lost touch with where you're keeping almost a million Steem makes me think you should not be making decisions for people who value every last one.
I've not lost any of them, I just don't mentally keep track of their particular balances. If that bothers your sense of how the universe should work, sorry I can't help.