RE: Will Steem succeed or commit suicide?
The value of BTC is just as you describe Steem. The number of users of Steem, however, is driven by Steemit. If Steemit fails, Steem will no longer have a use case, which will negatively impact it's value.
More significantly, the reverse is true. It is the content that users, those that invest nothing but time, money, and expertise, bring to Steemit, upon which the value of Steem depends.
This was the intent of Steemit. This is it's whole raison d'etre, according to the white paper.
I have nothing but good things to say about investors in Steem, however, investors traditionally invest in order to achieve capital gains, not to complain about the workers in the plant 'that only cost investors wages'.
It is those workers that potentiate Steem having any value beyond what BTC does.
Hey, I just want to clarify some confusion, and say that I totally agree with you.
Newcomers being a cost is fact. They cost money in account creation and delegation, I've seen the numbers.
However, I was referring to these ones:
"Newcomers who invest nothing actually cost the platform substantially, in account creation fees and delegated power."
I wasn't clear, and I should have been. When I said "invest nothing", I also meant the time required to create "quality content". Which, admittedly, most users do not produce. There are many users who have never produced a piece of quality content and that have generated less in total rewards than it cost Stinc/the blockchain to create their accounts.
Those are the ones I mean. The botnets, the sock puppets, the plagiarizers, most of /created (aka /new).
Minnows who create content that garners more rewards (un-botted) than their account cost to create are the bomb, and eventually they turn into dolphins which turn into whales.
There are a lot of posts by people that I have little interest in. However, just cuz I don't find it thrilling doesn't mean that pics of Kim Kardashian aren't 'quality content'.
Botnets, sock puppets, and the like, can all be damned, as far as I'm concerned. I do not equate such malicious actors with folks that post stuff I have no interest in, or vehemently disagree with.
I think you're touching on a serious point that no one wants to clarify properly. Investors in steem should not be entitled to anything but the steem they purchased. In the event it goes up in value, they win.
At the moment, though, they get to endlessly drain the rewards pool for themselves which makes no sense.
It is the witnesses who deserve compensation as they are essentially keeping the blockchain running.
I hope you'll consider joining the conversation in the comments of my newest post on these issues. We really need to highlight these problems for anything to change.