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How much is a Steemit blogger currently worth?

We know a Facebook user is worth around $140
We know a Twitter user is worth around $83

What is the lesson here?

When you measure the value of Steemit posts in dollars instead of in Steem Power, you're empowering the dollar. The dollar flows politically, and these politics influence how much people are worth to the dollar.

In parts of the world where for poltiical reasons the value of life in dollars is deemed "cheaper', the dollar payouts on Steemit would go much further because the cost of living is less.

The anti-globalization movement objects to the obvious disparity between the value assigned to life in developed nations versus developing nations—most particularly as reflected in World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO), and International Monetary Fund (IMF) decisions.[citation needed] They point to such numbers as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assumption that a developed nation can pay fifteen times more than a developing nation to avert a death due to climate change, as evidence of systematic neglect of the value of statistical life in the poorer South, as opposed to the more developed North. Some also fear that more standard global value of life mechanisms could have consequences for the working people in the developed nations.

Steem is a social network where wealth comes from people

So you cannot avoid the fact that the market cap reflects how much the market values the wealth produced by the bloggers at any point in time. What we have to remember is when the amount of bloggers goes global, we will eventually see bloggers who can live off lower payouts while producing a very high quality of content. This is why going forward, bloggers will have to find a niche, and produce more specialized content. People in developing countries will require higher payouts because the cost of living is higher under the dollar, and by no fault of theirs, this will effect the market cap.

It is for these reasons that it's not easy to determine what a fair payout is for the whole network. Facebook in calculating each user is worth $140 is doing it based on global statistics. Including everyone in the world into the data, and this makes for a number which to an American in Silicon Valley look insultingly low, but to an African in places where $140 is 6 months living expenses? To them it would seem fair. How will we determine the answer to these questions?

Do demographics matter?

Most bloggers today on Steemit might be from developed countries where the cost of living is quite high. I'm from a country where it's impossible for a blogger to live off $140 a year and even $25,878 is considered very low. If most bloggers lived in expensive parts of the world, where the cost of living is high, but also where the value of life statistics in dollars are $50,000 a year, then you could make a case that the current payouts on Steemit actually are low.

But when you consider Steemit is global, then as the demographics of Steemit bloggers change, the perception of fairness also changes, until what seems fair today in terms of payouts will seem like over paid tomorrow. How do we avoid this moving average, when we know it will trend lower over time until it possibly reaches the levels of Facebook, of Twitter? This is the dilemma for the current Steemit blogger, to figure out how to take advantage of the fact that right now we are early adopters and in a position where we can carve out a niche. In a few years a blog post might only net $1 or even just a few cents, even with massive upvotes.

What could this mean for the Steem price?

It means the demographics could effect the price, but also politics, and perceptions of fairness, and whether or not people buy Steem Power. I simply cannot predict the price of Steem. I would say if Steemit grows to a billion users and they all try to blog, you can expect the payouts per blogger to go down, possibly to levels like $140 a year on average with a 200 billion dollar market cap like Facebook, or possibly even lower if the market cap doesn't get that high.

My opinions

In my opinion, I do not think the "value of human life" should be attached to the "value of a user" on a social network. The problem is that under capitalism, there is a concept called cost of living. This creates an environment where the products and services which sustain life have some cost in dollars, and as a result of this it is not possible to separate the harsh realities from virtual reality. The Steem token may be a virtual currency, but the Steem Dollar is pegged to the US Dollar, and the US Dollar is a political currency. The blogger on Steemit in theory would have to earn enough in Steem Dollars to pay their cost of living, and in an ideal environment every blogger on Steemit would be able to earn enough from one quality post a day, to pay whatever their local cost of living is. Unfortunately the situation is more complex than that and the purpose of my post is to illustrate the complexity, and also to highlight the unfairness in the statistics.

As a result I do not think Steem will offer the equivalent of a "basic income". It offers at best a passive income to people who work really smart and who have the talent to maintain it. The follower list in my opinion will become the lifeline income source for bloggers in the long term. At the same time, if Steemit isn't fun, if gamification isn't implemented, then why would people buy Steem Power? And if people do not do that, then people in developed countries will not make enough from posting on Steemit to quit their day jobs on average, but there is no clue what the dollar figure would be.

For these reasons, I think of Steemit as a game. It's either going to be fun to post on Steemit without any concern about what the rewards are, or there will be bickering over what is or isn't fair, and the concept of fair will differ depending on if a person lives in a developing or developed country, and based on what they deem a blogger is worth which differs from individual to individual.

References

Are we over valued or under-valued on Steemit? A Steemit blogger is currently valued at $25,878