Would Whales be open to a redistribution of wealth for the good of Steemit?
Warning this post contains mostly questions, with the hope to getting a dialog going about the problems, if infact there are problems, with the wealth distribution in Steemit.
Is there a problem?
There is always going to be an unbalance in wealth and it is arguable what distribution is healthy, let's take a large industrial country like the UK they have a distribution where the top 10% own 45% of the wealth. Compare that to Steemit where 10% own 99.3%.
Will the problem self correct?
Again from steemwhales if we look at the top 100 users by estmated value, we can see that 36% of them have less than 100 lifetime posts. I am going to use that as an unscientific cut off and say, due to the built in inflation, that these accounts will be losing value at a higher rate than the average steemit user that is posting and voting regularly.
But the main reason I see referenced to how the problem will self correct is 'As new users come to the site they will buy more Steem and better distribute the system'. Some problems I see with this is, firstly, new users are coming from outside crypto and are not confident enough with bitcoin to buy Steem and, more importantly to this discussion, they are put off by the wealth distribution so do not want to invest.
If my second observation is correct and new users are scared off by the inequality, then steemit has a bit of a paradox. We need new users to invest to redistribute wealth but they will not invest while the wealth is held by so few.
Would whales be willing to give up wealth
As I am not a whale I can't answer this, but I will point out that whales do not have all the wealth it seems they have. Mainly because there is not a big enough market for Steem yet, if a whale/s tried to sell 250,000 Steem, which is the current market depth of polo's order book, the whale/s would receive $125,000 instead of the estimated $400,000.
So the $217,407,000 held by the top 10% or probably more importantly the $200,000,000 held by the top 1% is only paper value at the moment unless Steemit grows a significant amount. If a redistribution of wealth is needed I would hazard a guess that the whales would be happy to participate for the good of the ecosystem which is to say for their own good.
Are there any ideas for redistribution?
Only 2,700 characters in and I finally get to the main reason for this post, are there plans or discussions for this in place? If so where? I would love to participate. Have my other concerns been proven unfounded, making a need for a redistribution plan unnecessarily?
Thanks for reading and I look forward to hear some of thoughts of the community
Distribution is already happening via upvoting from whales but the process occurs over a long period of time. A page rank type of voting scheme like dan propose could help at doing better curation ans therefore more distribution.
Does steemit have the time to allow it to naturally distribute to a more sustainable distribution. What we have at the moment is putting some new users off. There will be other blockchain social media start ups coming through.
As well as that the distribution method is ripe for abuse at the moment. Via upvoting secondary accounts and accounts of friends, as a 'whales' vote can turn any post into a success (obviously you need good quality to be a big success).
So ultimately I agree distribution is happening, and I believe it needs to happen to not scare off the new users. I am just not sure it is happening quick enough
Interesting comparison of steem with a country like UK... :)
Whales are pretty much the main source of Steem tokens becoming available on the market for other users and investors to get.
P.S. 2700 characters, not words...
thanks for the correction. I figured I would use an europeon country as worldwide figures are distorted and America seems to be an outlier when it comes to western countries. Also the UK was the first stat I found =)
I understand where your worry is coming from, but the statistics on this thing are not simple. You should take a look at this excellent post on dilution by @hisnameisollie (and also rebuttal to criticism on that). While I believe that the centralization of wealth is not insignificant, I also don't see it as a major threat to Steem.
thanks it is links like these I am looking for. As to is it a major threat I am going to copy and paste from another comment I made
i would rather work smart and aspire to be of more value than take or even be given what someone else has built. the lesson of socialism is, if the wealth is taken from, those who gained it by creating value, they lose their incentive to create more, and so does the recipient. there is a place for charity but i don't know if anyone is starving here. maybe someone here is. i hate to make assumptions unnecessarily. charity is good for survival and bad for creativity and inspiration. let's all do our best to rise, but not at the expense of others. i am barely a minnow, i think i will learn how to swim, before i try commanding the ocean.