Declined Rewards Should Be Burned (Rewards for this Post Will Be Burned)

Hive account@smooth's initiative to do his burn post experiment got me thinking of changing the option to decline rewards.

Instead of redistributing rewards that are declined, the rewards should be automatically burned by sending them to the Hive account@null account.

I see a number of benefits to this.

• If one chooses to burn the rewards he or she receives for a post, for any number of reasons, being able to burn them automatically would remove the annoying hassle of having to power down the equivalent amount of SP just to burn it.

• Accounts that regularly do posts that decline rewards, such as Hive account@steemitblog, would benefit the entire economy simply by posting. They wouldn't have to change anything in the way they act, but their posting would be far more valuable for every stakeholder.

• It's a consensus among the community that the Promoted feature, while well-intentioned, does not work properly, and could be improved upon. My suggestion is replacing the Promoted tab with a Burned tab, indicating posts that have chosen to burn rewards. This could work as a way for smaller users, or anyone who wants more visibility, to get eyeballs on their work, since large stakeholders could focus on voting for posts that get their rewards burned. It would have a similar effect of incentivizing burning, but would probably work better than the current Promoted feature. Have photography share, but lack the following to gain any noteworthy traction? Choose the Burn Rewards option, and perhaps a whale or two choose to upvote, gaining you a slot on the Trending Page as well as new followers.

• The above could work as a way to freshen up the Trending Page as a whole. It's well documented that, barring a few, the whales on Steemit don't care about the content, the platform, or anything else other than their curation rewards. And there's very little that can be done to change that. Now, it goes without saying that the added value created by a portion of the daily rewards being burned is not the same as the curation rewards that are being made by masturbating the same trending authors who post the same terrible articles day in and day out, but Hive account@smooth's experiment seems to have shown that there are significant stakeholders willing to upvote posts by authors who have chosen to burn the rewards. The incentive would still be there, however, to reduce the money supply, which would, in turn, benefit the stakeholder since his or her existing stake would instantly be that much more valuable.

• An automatic system would remove the issue with trust that currently exists when people promise to burn the rewards of a post.

I, therefore, argue that burning rewards is a much better way of declining payout than the existing system, which merely redistributes the rewards among other posts.

Choosing to burn the rewards could also work as a way to gain goodwill among the community since people burning their rewards should be considered the heroes of the Steemit community, benefitting the entire economy.

I would personally see myself using that option somewhat regularly. Currently, it's a hassle when you need to power down a certain amount of SP just to burn it, which is a problem, especially for us lazy people.

To lead by example, the rewards for this post will be burned. So upvote if you agree.

Disagree in the comments if you do.