nobody is saying that EOS and STEEM cant have interoperability. But being STEEM witness is like being a politician for the STEEM blockchain, being a block producer for EOS is definitely a conflict of interest.
It would be like being a US Senator, while being on the Russian Federation Council.
I don't see being a witness that way. There may be some politics in the campaigning of a witness - but there's no governance for the most part in Steem. We don't have super secret meetings where we decide what happens next. We talk a lot about what we'd like to see next - but we aren't making those decisions.
Instead what we are is essentially gatekeepers of the blockchain. We are paid to produce blocks and occasionally decide what changes are allowed to happen on the blockchain. We can campaign and promote ourselves as more than that, and you can vote for us for those reasons, but it's not required or part of actually being a witness.
The key point to all of this is the blockchain and understanding that the blockchain is not steemit.com. When it comes to steemit.com (the website), communities, the development of SMTs, the priorities of tasks in development, or almost anything else - witnesses have very little say in the matter. Pretty much every change you've seen since June 2017 has been outside of the purview of witnesses.
To Steemit Inc, witnesses are block producers and they are paid to produce blocks and consider changes in blockchain consensus. Those witnesses may also be "other things" on top of that, but the official witness responsibilities of each of those people/groups ends there.
I would hope that my track record so far as a block producer would at least give me the benefit of the doubt when it comes to being a "conflict of interest". If it becomes a problem and people see me making decisions that favor one chain over another - then I'd expect to be voted out.
I think an even easier way to put it is, no one in their right mind would want someone working at two central banks at once.
Charity you're are completely right, but I would take things a step further and say that having people play politics on multiple side would be no different than having the Rothschild's controlling the banking system of multiple countries, something that id assum most of us are highly against
That's correct. It's basic Business Ethics.
It's not that simple, you have been around long enough to know that the witnesses aren't politicians controlling this place.
You have the ability to decide the how SBD works which literally gives you the ability to make or break this entire economy, and from what I read you may be getting even more powers with this next hf. Whether you like it or not this is politics. Secret meeting or not, You are the face of the STEEM blockchain and voice of those who delegate resources to you. Id also like to point out that all single politicians(in the American Republic system which is really no different than DPOS at its core) do nothing more than talk about what they would like to see next, which is gets them voted in to the pool that allows them to vote on what actually happens next.
You overestimate our responsibility in this. Our current responsibility in relation to SBD currently is only that we report the price of STEEM (as oracles). We also have the power to approve/block hardforks which would change SBD, but that hasn't happened in a long while.
If you're referring to the peg discussions that have happened over the past 6 months - we have discussed at length various mechanisms to restore the $1 SBD peg, but there hasn't been much traction. The public outlash at "wanting to make the system work as intended" has scared many witnesses away from approving anything that would work towards actually affecting the price.
As far as I know, the only change for SBD proposed in the next HF is to increase the percentage at which SBD printing slows, which timcliff worked on.
In some ways yes, in others no.
Politicians once elected have the powers to propose, ratify, and amend bills - which become law, and allow politicians to legally earmark funds (from tax payers) in order to establish agencies, build infrastructure, and ultimately enforce those laws.
Witnesses can also follow those same steps to propose, ratify, and amend changes to the blockchain, which essentially become "law" - but we can't earmark funding to actually make these things happen. For smaller projects we can fund them with our witness earnings, but that only goes so far. For anything beyond that, we are at the mercy of those with the purse strings (Steemit Inc with their massive "premine") and the decisions they decide to make, regardless of how we vote.
The system lacks checks and balances, funding appropriation, and has a sole power who is ultimately in control of the direction of Steem. As witnesses, we are gatekeepers that pretty much just prevent them from doing bad things to the community (which we do).
Thats only currently. If things go as planned EOS and STEEM are going to be the most valuable projects in crypto, potentially surpassing Ethereum in price. At that point things will be completely different in regards to funding as well as who is in control of marketshare. Steemit inc may currently have that large premine, but the purpose of that is so that they can get things done to further the project, which will inevitably cause their wealth to change hands. Were at a point where being too selfish isn't in their best interest on multiple levels; both competitively nor legally so I'd expect the core centralization of wealth issue to be short lived.