Human behaviour is as conditioned as those from the rest of animals in our world. It's inherent of their nature. It's just that the human response building may be more complex and many threads flow into our final reaction. For example the act of clicking the like button. Is a more subtile conditioning process. Iván Pávlov coudn't make us drool by ringing a bell unless he put the individual in a freedom lack situation, used frecuently in torture practices.

Apart from that, it's clear that centralized platforms have really mastered to the highest levels the conditioning practices. People are willing to hit that like button as the Pavlov's dog drooled while the neutral stimulus was used. But there are others salivating, those waiting to gather the "thumb up" emojis. The success use cases widely spread by companies at the social networks marketing seminars had helped a lot on this. Every business can build its path to huge benefits when applying the proper marketing solutions on hands of their community managers... drama it's a very valuable asset that anyone can create at any moment.

Are we being conditioned by rewards at Hive? Indeed. What would happen with our community if there were no rewards at all? The same as for the centralized platforms that would make their users pay for a subscription.

The blockchain gammification it's the kickoff for that new economy you were talking about the other day. Not that it's the first on doing something similar but the first that gave users a piece of the infraestructure generated incomes. We don't own the platform nor the infraestructure, it's all shared and decentralized somewhat, not evenly in my humble opinion. Great stakeholders and related businesses (some of them centralized) control how the cake is shared and which the direction will be. It's just we have the "ilusion" very well inserted in our minds that we have control of what is going on. As an example the chain split caused by the Justin's irruption onto the scene.

It wasn't that all of us, the humble users that hold some HP had decided to split. Those big holders kicked the ball and we followed them freely (of course) for a better and healthier chain somewhat decentralized. We were conditioned in different ways depending on each one expectations. Those of us that hated the idea of a big idiot whale (company) controlling our destiny got conditioned by the decentralization perspective, those waiting for more attention and rewards got conditioned by the bigger cake piece promised by the 1M dollar pizza man. Of course there are more variations on this...

We post because we want to be rewarded, we vote because we will be rewarded. Some will also engage and comment sincerely not waiting for an outcome. The usual behaviour is that you can post the best content ever and you could have not even have a comment unless a bot stops in your post, lol.

I'm rather skeptical as you can see but don't misunderstand me, I'm of those hopeful guys that waits for a better future, a better world for all and for that "New World" (economy) in which all would help each other grow not only economically but also spiritually.

Forgive me for dropping this too long comment but you deseve to be payed with the same coin 😜