Yes, I see what you mean. I should qualify my statement by saying:
If the curation percentage is high enough, then it would only be more profitable to vote on your own content if it could compete with the quality of other posts. For example, at a 99% curation reward level, the most significant factor in deciding what to vote for would be the quality of the content (instead of whether of not it was yours).
I'm certainly not saying that having such a high percentage would be optimal, just that such an equilibrium level must exist. Your point has clarified however that a mathematical deduction of this level isn't possible.
Since VP is weighted by the holdings of SP, the actual point at which self votes may become more valuable than votes from the community depends on the SP of the account.
~10,000 minnow votes are yet unequal in ability to impart reward than one whale vote.
For minnows, self votes are silly. Since people like to receive votes, they also like to reciprocate when they receive them. HF19 leaves minnows with ~10 votes they can cast daily before causing their VP to be unable to fully recharge. By self voting a minnow can receive those 10 votes.
However, by properly curating and casting those votes, accompanied by relevant comments, on the posts of others, the entire pool of ~100 votes those others possess becomes motivated to reciprocate with votes on the comment. Also, by voting other's posts, and commenting relevantly, those votes can attract followers who might upvote your posts daily.
Self votes don't even compare to the returns proper curation offers. This yet ignores the real value of curation, as the intercourse with those whose ideas you find interesting is worth more (at least to me) than financial rewards.
I haven't addressed pandering - in which minnows seek to gain votes from whales. It is a problem, as it deprives the community of content of higher quality panderers might generate were they to actually concern themselves with something other than rewards. It also focuses rewards into those accounts already possessing substantial holdings, and clogs the comments section with irrelevant fluff.
This makes no sense. Regardless of curation level, by self voting you increase your rewards. Since this seems to be the only consideration of self voters, they'd still do it. Upvotes on a post increase the author reward for the post, and that's their goal.
This imbalance is untenable. The white paper states the intention was to distribute ~90% of rewards to ~30% of accounts, but, as the chart shows ~99% of rewards inure to ~1% of accounts. The various selfvoting, botnet voting, vote timing collusion, circle jerking cliques, etc., are degrading the ability of the platform to grow, and thus causing Steem itself to not appreciate.
It is the weighting of VP by SP that causes all these problems, and additionally makes of Steem a security in the estimation of the SEC (at least according to my understanding of the regulations), which is a whole 'nother universe of problems I suspect none of us wants.
Under a hypothetical 100% curation / 0% author reward incentive, you will make most reward by voting on the posts which subsequently receive the most votes, whether these are your posts or not. So the optimal strategy is absolutely to vote on the best posts. A 99% curation incentive is little different. Of course, at 99% curation / 1% author reward, nobody would bother to post, but somewhere (I suspect much higher than 25%) is an optimal level.
You are pretty much right, except that a) financial rewards aren't the only issue that determines participation. It actually matters very little to me, personally. But, I am weird =p, and b) because financial rewards are so important to so many, characterizing the most upvoted posts as the 'best' is inaccurate, unless by best you only mean 'the best post to game for financial rewards'.
Again, I believe the real solution to the problem that rewards are being too concentrated doesn't involve the split between curation and creation rewards, but rather how VP is weighted by SP.
I have posted numerous times on the matter, and my views have so far been but reinforced as time passes. Full and in depth exposition of what I think is the best way for Steemit to move forward would create a wall of text here, and that wouldn't be appropriate.
I'm not particularly against changing the split. I just don't think it addresses the central issue.
I have read some of your arguments elsewhere and have some sympathy with them. In practice though, I just don't think Steem could change to the extent you would like, but increasing curation split may be feasible. I'm aware that many unresolved issues would remain.
You may well be right that Steem won't make those changes. I'm not sure that not making those changes will be optional, in the long run. The SEC may have the final say, and that would be devastating for Steemit, and, in particular, @dan. Not having Steemit would devastate me, so I advocate those changes I think will optimize Steemit.
I do appreciate your reasons for finding such changes unlikely. Frankly, I share your pessimism regarding the likelihood of Steem adopting them. As I have said before, though, Steemit code is open source, and at this very moment forks are being written. If Steemit doesn't optimize, it will be likely to be superseded by a platform that is less centralized.
It is the plethora of issues that stem from one matter, and that is weighting of VP by SP, that most strongly, IMHO, advocates for addressing that particular issue, rather than continuing to sprout a variety of mitigations for each symptom, and that includes altering the rewards split.
I am a Steemit fanboy. I really want to enjoy this platform indefinitely. A couple of the symptoms of the essential design flaw of Steemit are of existential potential, even if we disregard my speculations regarding growth, appreciation of Steem, and discouragement of new accounts. These are the SEC, and Sybil attacks, at least.
Improving curation rewards at the expense of author rewards can't address either issue.
TBQH, until today, and on occasion in the past when I've managed a post that gained attention, around 2/3 of my rewards are from comments, rather than posts. Since my comments usually accompanied by my votes (presently I am desperately trying to recharge my VP, which threatens to never recharge unless I do. I apologize for my rudeness in not voting), increasing curation rewards would be very beneficial to me personally, financially.
I think. LOL Of more import than the ratio of rewards still, is the fact that I can't gain curation rewards if I can't curate, and the VP curve is preventing me from curating. Indeed, as I have explained before, the VP decay rate is driving self votes due to so many fewer votes being available.
In the vote desert, where minnows can only cast ~10 votes/day, new accounts are starved for votes. Desperate to get SOME rewards, many of these new accounts self vote. If minnows had ~100 votes/day I suspect this particular cause of self votes would evaporate.
Self votes to gain exposure, by driving comments to the top would still happen. Self votes from accounts just mining the rewards pool would too, but changing the VP decay rate would impact whale self votes, by increasing the amount of self voting necessary to maximize the rewards mined thereby by an order of magnitude. I expect this would have dramatically greater impact than altering the curation/creation rewards split to any reasonable ratio.
One more observation regarding altering that ratio is that a good post takes a lot of work. Casting a vote takes almost none. Regardless of the impact on self voting that increasing curation rewards may produce, it is difficult already to justify granting a quarter of the value of a post to those that need do no more than cast a vote on it.
Bah! I apparently am incapable of not producing walls of text. =/
I apologize if you find it annoying. It is not my intention, but is a result of my intention to respond substantively.
It doesn't bother me, but I don't have time to ingest it thoroughly at the moment. I'd suggest you pin it down to a succinct argument and make it all available on your blog (maybe even weekly), and link to it from my relevant articles if you wish. As I say, I have sympathy with some of what you say, but changing to that degree would be like turning the titanic (as the cliché goes).
your point at end about the curation rewards getting a lot already is very true