Open Letter to @ranchorelaxo - A Call to make reasonable Diversification

Dear Hive account@ranchorelaxo,

First off, I know that you don't know me from a hole in the wall. I know that I am way too small a fish to hit your radar, and if you even come to take a look at this post it would be a miracle. But I felt it was worth a shot.

As I said in my post a week ago, I am no longer involving myself in the flag war that is going on in Steem, I stepped back, gave up. No more crap posting from me. However, I do want to try to reach out with what I feel is a reasonable request and see if we can make any progress...

Listen, we all know your upvote is yours to use as you please. No one disputes that. You have a powerful upvote due to good timing and wise investments. Well done. You are to be congratulated for your success with Steem. You are in a position the other 50,000 daily Steem users can only look at and be envious of, wishing we had been in the position to be where you are. Awesome work! Amazingly well done. And you deserve to reap the benefits of your success.

But can I ask one question?

Why not spread the wealth with your upvote, share the wealth a little bit and support some additional projects that are trying to make Steem successful for more and more people?

After all, the more success that people see in Steem, the closer we get to mass adoption, the more your Steem will be worth right?

So here is my big ask. And really, it seems like such a small thing in the grand scheme of things. But maybe it is... I don't know. I grew up being told that the only bad question was the one you didn't ask. So here goes.

Would you consider spending ONE of your Daily upvotes on projects or services other than the person you currently upvote?

I don't know what kind of deal you have worked out with that person, or why that relationship developed. But I feel the amount of controversy could be reduced if you used just 2% of your Voting Power to find and support projects who are trying to help the Steem community. According to Steemworld your 100% upvote right now is worth $131, and that is at 92% VP. I am sure your current votee could manage to survive on $1179 a day while you dish out $131 to other worthwhile projects. Even a 25% Vote from you ($33) on four different projects would make a huge difference to some small fish.

I'd even be happy to offer a few suggestions for you.

Of course I will start with my own Hive account@thefreshfive initiative. Hive account@aussieninja and I are working on greeting and encouraging retention in new Steemians by going out into the introduceyourself tag and finding some of the gems hidden amidst all the tag abuse. We are introducing those Steemians to our followers and encouraging engagement. Currently, our account has a little over 1000 SP which I delegated from my main account to be able to provide a little bump to some intro posts. These posts are currently averaging less than $2 in total payout, but this is my mission in Steem, so I will keep it going to try to encourage retention of new Steemians until there are no new Steemians to support. One vote from you, even once a week, would make a huge difference in this project and the SP we could dedicate to upvoting new Steemians who are worth keeping around.

Hive account@slothicorn the lovechild of Hive account@stellabelle is a service that finds and supports under appreciated artists on the blockchain. Currently this account is supporting artists through a delegation of the majority of Stella's own SP. Your upvote would allow that account to begin building it's own SP reserve allowing Stella to draw down her own SP over time while the slothicorn account becomes self sufficient. The goal of this project is to provide a basic income for artists so that they can focus their entire creative energy on creating art rather than having to grind out a living with a full time job that leaves them with no time to create. Just think of the lives you could change with your upvote!

Hive account@ginabot created by Hive account@neander-squirrel is a wonderful service that is FREE to all Steemians giving us instant Discord notifications of things we want to be notified about happening on the Blockchain. the Gina account doesn't even post once a week, you could set it and forget it to autovote her and support the continued development of this project so that Squirrel sees some benefit from the effort put into this project.

Hive account@thewritersblock led by Hive account@rhondak, Hive account@gmuxx, Hive account@bex-dk and so many others, this project not only holds writing contests with real Steem prizes for the winners, but it seeks to foster terrific writing through workshops and editing assistance led in their Discord channel. The writer's block account posts every few days, and your upvote would help increase awareness of this project, and contribute to the prizes they are able to give out to terrific writers on Steem.

Hive account@ethandsmith's SteemEngineExpress is a grass roots curation effort that really highlights some terrific content on Steem. Ethan posts his Curation roundup Once a Week, so you don't even have to pick and choose which ones to support. Ethan is really good people working hard to make this community a success in spite of some of the shortcomings. An Upvote to his account would be another investment in great curation and continual finding terrific content on Steem.

There are so many more projects out there you could support. These are just a few of the ones I could mention off the top of my head. You figure out what you can see yourself supporting and I am sure we can find a project that matches up with those interests.

I know that some of the whales supposedly reached out to you in an attempt to negotiate something or other, but as far as I could tell, no one has really posted a plea to you for some sort of legitimate diversification of your voting habits. I just don't see why you can't continue your support of TA while also supporting other great things going on around the platform.

If you read this, on behalf of all the minnows, thank you for reading. I do hope you will give the idea some thought and consideration. I don't think one full upvote a day sent in a different direction is a huge ask, but feel free to offer a counter argument if you are so inclined. If you wish to speak privately, I can be found on discord or telegram as mikepm74, I would love to hear from you.

I really am looking forward to a very successful future for Steem. You play a big role in that success. So I am hopeful that we can find a way to make that success possible for the many, and not just a few hand chosen disciples.

Thank you for your time!

Regards,

-Mike