So, I've been reading all the downvote comments and discussions of the EIP (Economic Improvement Proposal) and I want to share a few thoughts. If you don't know what I am talking about there are likely 2 posts you should read.
EIP - Economic Improvement Proposal:
https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/improving-the-economics-of-steem-a-community-proposal
As one part of that proposal is the addition of a downvote pool:
https://steemit.com/steem/@vandeberg/downvote-pool-deep-dive
First of all, I have mixed feelings about EIP, but I've seen so many comments questioning whether we need downvotes at all and YES, downvotes are very important to the economy. I feel like lack of downvoting is a huge part of the reason we are stagnant.
I am not talking about a couple of bully whales picking on people for no good reason other than having thin skin and not being able to handle the idea that others have a different opinion. My opinion is that those downvotes are a bad idea, but still the right of the stakeholder. Other invested stakeholders should offset bad actors, and they just haven't.
I am talking about fighting abuse. Plagariasts and Spammers and those who want to post a few snapshots or a youtube video and use bots to upvote it.
In a decentralized economy with no authority, the solution built in to manage our investment and keep our partners from embezzling it is downvotes.
I don't care about the "Down Vote" pool and I am neither for or against the EIP, but I do think some of you need to consider how the lack of downvotes has impacted investments.
The Inflation Pool should be for building a struggling economy. Every day when the blockchain prints new Steem it devalues the current Steem unless we do things to create value.
It's my opinion that holding Steem should be enough incentive to flag those who are not adding value, and I do not think our Stakeholders are suddenly going to be committed to protecting their investment because of a code change, but I do want to reinforce that if downvotes were being used properly haejin wouldn't be haejin and we wouldn't have so many scammers and spammers. If people thought there was a realistic chance of getting downvoted they would use the bidbots more sparingly.
So, come up with your own opinions on the EIP and the downvote pool, but keep in mind without downvotes we have no way to impact scammers, spammers, illegal activity and abuse.
Here are some Downvote Worthy posts!
This user is bidboting blurry pictures to trending each day for nebulous reasons.
https://steemit.com/digital/@abrockman/nebulous-series-179-or-aj-brockman
This guy also upvotes his snapshot level art to just off trending each day
https://steemit.com/india/@mehta/indoor-wedding-dinner-colorchallenge-friday-sky-blue
Imagine if some of that Steem in the above posts was being directed to onboarding or curation projects? Or at least to retain content creators that care about the future of Steem. Imagine if bernie's shit posts were still encouraging engagement and distribution or all Traf's self upvotes we being directed towards building the economy.. See, we are wasting a lot of Inflation and we are spinning our wheels. While I can fully understand either supporting EIP or being opposed as there are valid reasons to do both... Don't kid yourself about the importance of downvotes.
We all are aware of several large accounts that have several accounts that they post from and upvote each day. In a perfect world, the other stakeholder would oppose abuse and abusive downvotes.
It isn't happening and maybe a code change will fix that. Frankly, I doubt it.
However, as long as the entire inflation pool just goes to stack tokens I find it unlikely we will see growth. We should be allocating the Inflation Pool to things that add value.
What are your thoughts?
