Yes, I remember reading Taraz's post, and I remember it being somewhat sobering in the sense of understanding some of the fundamentals of Steemit. At the time, I also thought about the "equation" that even if we took all the Steem that exists and divided it perfectly evenly among the platform's million+ accounts, we'd only end with with 200+ ish Steem per person.
Which made me think about Facebook and the way people often are complaining that the giant site "rapes" people because they make BILLIONS of dollars every year from using your content and creating advertising revenue and the users never see a dime! SUCH an outrage! But when you break down the numbers, each account on Facebook is actually just worth about $20 a year. "Rape?" Hardly...
So, of course, the "reality" is that so many people arrive here with the (false) perception that they can "make a living" or "make a lot of money" blogging on Steemit.
No. No you can't. Or — at least — it's very unlikely that you will.
Most likely, this is a social venue that happens to give you a little pocket money. The whole notion of "making thousands a month" is mostly pie in the sky...
Which, in turn, leaves us with the next question: Are these "illusions," nonetheless, required in order to market the platform for continued growth?
Yes, you speak some sharp truths there my friend. I like it...
Regarding this...
Actually, yes, its intentional.
White Paper
The economic effect of this is similar to a lottery where people over-estimate their probability of getting votes and thus do more work than the expected value of their reward and thereby maximize the total amount of work performed in the service of the community. The fact that everyone "wins something" plays on the same psychology that casinos use to keep people gambling in other words, small rewards help reinforce the idea that its possible to earn bigger rewards.
But!
My point or I guess you could say my target audience are those with the potential to be the middle class. I know that makes me sound like an elitist and I hope I'm forgiven for transacting in truths. But, there are plenty of people who have the potential to be Dolphins yet constantly power down.
As far as percentages go, maybe it could be closer to the global average 13% , I don't really know. I've seen models of 20% saying that's the sweet spot. But what I do know is that 1% is just way too low.
That's basically the model other social media websites have, just create content on this platform we made, we'll make money off of your hard work and sell you out, they're just more upfront about it. Can anyone blame any dolphin who powers down if one were to take a look at the historical price before all cryptos exploded to the upside thanks to bitfinex?
Basically, a lot of whales made a lot of money dumping on some clueless Koreans.
And yes, anything that promises that every single participant can make money, and no one has to put money in, is a complete and utter scam.