Your argument sounds a lot like 'really people do not benefit from this, but I do, in part because they do not benefit from it'
That's some community, civic spirit you got going on there. I can see how you are going to win this campaign.
Of course, maybe I am reading this entirely wrong, and maybe the abstract does not represent the overarching concepts of the document, but what do you suppose this means?
An important key to inspiring participation in any community, currency or free market economy is a fair accounting system that consistently reflects each person's contribution. Steem is the first cryptocurrency that attempts to accurately and transparently reward an unbounded number of individuals who make subjective contributions to its community.
I see, if you want to interpret the parts I have emphasised in italics very disingenuously, that it does not specify the party whose subjective contribution (vote) and the contribution being judged thereby, is not the same person.
The actual reason why self voting was not banned from day one, is the very flimsy argument that you can just create alts to do this, or you can buy them, so, why not just let people do it directly, since they will do it anyway.
As an experienced computer trainer, I can assure you, that in every computer system design, defaults are vitally important to facilitating beneficial and productive use of a computer system. @personz submitted a request to the steem condenser github, that the 'upvote post' checkbox should be default unchecked. Steemit, Inc, instantly made the change. This has led to a greatly reduced number of small accounts consuming their votes with their posts, meaning they get more benefit from supporting their peers and those who they are fans of.
The reasons to ban direct self voting on the chain, in the consensus logic, is a user experience reason. The moral and social and psychological factors of it looking bad 'putting tickets on yourself', as we say in australian english, is irrelevant, in the big picture, as you say. But allowing the users to exercise their power more judiciously, while reducing the cognitive load, is a very solid reason to do this.
Then the entire platform is flimsy (which I don't believe is true). If you want to combat sybil, you will have to invent a whole new technology: Cryptographically verifiable unique identity
I'm not saying this is impossible. But, like I said, it's a whole new technology. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if someone wrote a proof to demonstrate one way or the other.
Sorta like the halting problem. It's mathematically proven that the halting problem cannot be solved. But you can set bounds to side-step the proof. So even if unique identity cannot be supported by a proof, there might be reasonable bounds.
Interesting idea and good insight. It's something I've been interested in for a while, trustless identity.
Which position is 100% self-consistent? Let's take several iterations:
Iteration #1
Iteration #2
Iteration #3
I believe you are justified in using your stake to oppose self-voting. But I also think it fails the self-consistency test.
You forgot iteration #4
Person A is also basically justifying the position to oppose this change based on claims that the Rewards Pool does not belong to somebody. This is clearly incorrect, because every holder of Steem is paying this interest rate, at a rate of 9.3% or so per year, through the dilution of their assets.
Person B is also, along with many others who they have been interacting with, to consciously not press the button, just because it is there. They are consistently reporting that their conscience and self respect are improved. In stark contrast to Person A, who seems to be reacting to this habit of self-voting, as though the campaign to disable it on the blockchain is something that is being forced upon them.
The self-consistency test stands, I'm afraid. Especially because you have also not considered this as a flaw in the system, that can easily be fixed, and we are doing plenty of work analysing. I would argue that in fact, from a standpoint of a psychological and sociological analysis of the behaviours, as they relate to cognate phenomena outside of the blockchain, demonstrate that your resistance is proof of decadence and corruption, and related to childhood issues caused by being unjustly treated by trusted adult caregivers.
You will find that as you learn more about my position, that I have not neglected to think this through, in fact, possibly to the contrary, and that I have many verifiable, and corroborated well established facts that can be cited, if you like, from psycholoogy, sociology, economics and philosophy.
Wow.
"This is clearly incorrect, because every holder of Steem is paying this interest rate, at a rate of 9.3% or so per year, through the dilution of their assets."
Quote from your answer... If we are all paying our share of the interest, can't we use the stake we are paying for as we want? Why do you get to determine who I vote for with the stake you just said I pay for with my dilution?
Flagged because there is no way that two paragraphs, one being mine, and one, your fallacious argument, deserve a dollar, when I can barely get that on a post I spent two hours laying out nicely, cleaning every typo I could find.
Kurt just comes along and 'swoop' a dollar. If I can identify what clearly is a circle jerk, and that clearly is, I am obliged to treat it the same way as a self vote. No matter how good it is. That was rubbish. Shame on you for playing the dirty game of vote4vote, or circle jerking, whichever it is.
It's fine. Not worried about it. Use your stake however you like. I even voted for it.
To answer this question needs more than speculation. There is a reason why I have got a peg on my nose and I am deploying the fastest single node I know of to build behemoth database query engine for doing precisely the analysis that will give us a nice little graph showing exactly how much the majority, versus the outliers, plus exactly who that is...
You no better answer the question than I do, by your own standard.
I am uncertain why this analytical work has not been done, considering the amount of words that none other than @dan has spent discussing the topic, in relation to reward calculation formulae, and the question of how to ensure that the distribution approaches this equality, while accounting for community consensus about what is quality and what is not, since obviously the whole purpose of having a forum is null and void if you just pay out 9.3%, or whatever the momentary rate is per unit of time.