Well, let's start by explaining what a "witness" is, what function they have and why they do it.
What do the witnesses-miners do?
fuente
The name of witness is given to some people who control computers with which they elaborate two works. The first is to keep copies of the steem chain active so that without being controlled by anyone, it is active and available at all times for the user. The second is to do steem mining, that is, they add to the registry all the activity of the chain: post, comments and accounting; for this last one it takes into account all the transactions that are made with steem or steem Dollar besides votes, flags and collections of rewards.
How witnesses are organized in steemit
The mining system steem is different from that of, for example Bitcoin. In this last one the first miner who completes a block of the chain collects the money of the work, that forces to that the miners need gigantic computers with big energetic consumption to compete in this race. Many computers doing the same job. It is something as stupid as that you would like to buy a car, commission it in 100 factories, they would produce your car and you would keep the first one that was delivered fulfilling the characteristics that you requested, and that the rest were to be thrown away .
In steemit the dynamics is much more rational. There are 20 miners who take the vast majority of the work and do it in an orderly manner, one block each, but since there are many more miners make each X blocks one for miners who are outside of those 20 and are also granted in an orderly manner. This system has a much more rational energy consumption so the 20 miners of the first team earn money. According to a friend told me, from the 21 to the 40 more or less they gain something and at least they cover the expenses. Beyond they lose money.
The question Why do you vote for witnesses?
We have arrived at the authentic meaning of the post. How do witnesses come to occupy their place in the classification? Well, through the votes. That is why they ask us to vote for them. Its form of promotion is to do things that "have utility for the community". But really that is a facade, the utility that they want to give and that hides behind that "Utility for the community" is the utility for the capital. You may think that they are some asshole, but no, mining is a business and they look for the good of their business, that is why they seek to attract votes. And now your question is: If they want votes, why do not they focus on the majority of us who are little fish? Well here comes the second part.
Liquid democracy
Liquid democracy is a euphemism for a democratic system that instead of relying on "one man, one vote" is based on "Your value is what you have" that is to say that the liquid refers to liquidity
That is why witnesses seek to favor capital with things that can increase the value of the steem, such as attracting people or making people do not leave. If you have 100 sp like me, together we are worth 200, that is, we would have to join 20,000 to have the vote value of a whale of 2,000,000 SP. Trump and many others would like to bring Liquid Democracy to their countries! The truth is that the minows do not care. Surely they will tell you that they work so that steemit exists and that is good for us.It's true, but if you tell them not to worry and leave that job because we return to Facebook, they will surely cry. They do not keep the blockchain for us, they do it for money and they seek the vote of the rich.
And now I repeat the same question, but you will see that the meaning has changed a lot.
Why do you vote for witnesses?
That's what I asked myself. If they do not give a shit, why vote? My vote serves to disguise the second part of "liquid democracy".
Okay, I accept liquid democracy, but I do not help you to hide it behin a false democracy. I have already withdrawn all my votes to the witnesses. That does not affect them at all, but I am calmer with my conscience. Now I ask you to reflect on the subject and if you think that once again they treat us like puppets, withdraw your witnesses' votes as well.
Let's accept that steemit is a plutocracy and let's make it liquid. But this time liquidity means transparent.
But I do not want to cheat you, I still have a vote in an
witness. I have it because he is the witness of 
, because I have spoken with him, because I am knowing him, because he teaches me many things about steemit, because I help him when I can, because I care what he does and why that he cares what I do. If you have any witnesses with whom you have a relationship like this ... Vote for it!