I really like this response. I've long held the contention that "one dollar contributed to government, one vote" would result in a much fairer system. Sure, a Google could pay a whole bunch of extra taxes and get some legislation changed -- but then they'd face competition the next year (and future ones) from other search engines/spy organizations, who could also contribute to the bloodsucking government (I'm not sure my position is clear, here... :) ).
Of course, that was in my more naive days when I believed that old phrase, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" wouldn't result in a negative outcome!
Anyway, I had a post "moderated to oblivion" simply because I included an affiliate link (and I think perhaps BitConnect might be a scam now, but it's too late, I'm already involved) and I noticed that I was able to remove the "oblivion" after I had funded my Steemit account. So there's one way to go about it, but, I understand that not everybody has the available funding. So a community solution seems the right approach.
I like differentiating between "number of votes" and "weight of votes". I'm certain that there's a "middle ground" algorithm.
Thank You, I completely get where you are coming from (Don't let Uncle Sam watch the kids, and don't bend down when he's around ;) ).
You exemplified a point I tried to make in one of my earlier posts on the topic (in relation to being flagged).... Sure, I could have sunk some money into my account and "bought back" my Reputation, And yet this, to me, sure seems to only support the Oligarchy set-up being run here. Sort of defeates ANY purpose of content being the deciding factor of success or failure (rather than who can afford the success and who is doomed to wallow in the mud).
There are a lot of good points in this dialogue between you two. I especially like the magazine/cd analogy, as it does a good job of illustrating the dynamics of the features here.
These are the kinds of conversations we need to make a better future for the community. Thanks a lot for the great input.
Thank You.
It seems so hopeless at times, being a Red Fish just trying to stay afloat here. Especially when it seems the Value-Of-One's-Network has far more influence than the actual Quality-Of-One's-Content. When Whales can post "spam" (Like a YouTube music video with no commentary or just a copy/paste of the yt video's description) and have their Whale Network upvoting the crap out of it for big profits while a Red Fish post of personal pics or videos and personal experiences, etc. goes by unnoticed (and sometimes flagged by these same Whales).
How do we get back to Quality-of-Content being the deciding factor of whether one is successful or a failure? How do we stop such abuses and injustices of these highly valuable Networks of accounts/users of abuse/collusion?
As it stands, it's a moot point. The "solution" to have every Red Fish flag every spam or inappropriate post would leave little to no upvoting power for promoting others, and would surely trigger retaliation flags from those more powerful accounts of collusion. And add in the powerful self-upvoting abuse being used by these same collusion accounts.... it always comes back to a trickle-up economy in my mind (thus, the Financial Oligarchy label).
IDK, time will tell.