No it doesn't mean that at all. You and your 16 friends would have to have a huge amount of money to buy the stake. You would have to find people with enough stake to upvote you...
I do think your points are valid on the security, but who is picking the witnesses now? On what merit?
Just like with the voting bots, if you and your friends were bad actors, I guess they could remove their votes. :)
Interesting points and thanks for contributing.
You make a good point but it is not impossible.
If someone think it is good this so I imagine that it would be good also for this person to have a government which is elected by vote buying? Because it would be basically the same, in the end, the witnesses are like the government in the Steem network. Would you be comfortable knowing that these people are there because they buy the votes? It is the question I think ... I would not ;)
I do believe that there are still enough witnesses within that 120 that you mention doing things for the network and / or the Steem community ... I do not know if 50 but surely more than 21. People who mantain projects, apps, etc. I can not speak for others but I do look.
This does not make it good, it just tells me that the one who does it (vote selling) can also take advantage. Still think the idea come from pure greed.
Yeah, you make some excellent points. I guess, I don't feel like many would buy the votes or be able to buy the votes. That is probably why I feel a great big shrug over the whole thing.
Another thing... It could leave us in an interesting position for a hostile take over. lol, not that I think that is likely.
Again, thanks for the thoughtful discussion as I am still sorting out how I feel about the whole thing. I don't think many are going to jump on the bandwagon anyway, and the other witnesses do protest. It's an interesting, thought-proving topic though.
The American revolution was technically a hostile take over.....turned out pretty good for the 'Mericans. 😁😁😁😁 Not so good for the Brits.