I was mulling over writing this post for a while now. For much of the past two weeks, it seems most of my posts are written in an effort to counteract the negativity that seems to be taking over this site. Complaining is becoming the norm and the "unfair" compensation system is a main target. Of course, the ones profiting from it are also attacked, even being compared to the bankers that enslaved humanity for the last 100 years.
The other day I wrote the following post. I did it in an effort to help people realize that they need to focus their attention on what they can do. If you didn't read it, check it out:
In this post, I want to focus upon something a bit different. Now, this is going to come across as defending the whales and I guess I am. The reason I am doing this is because there is absolutely no way to know what these people did to accumulate the steem power they did.
Ask yourself this: WHAT DID THESE PEOPLE DO TO GET WHERE THEY ARE TODAY?
To start, it must be stated that people, overall, are lazy. We are conditioned, especially in this era, to seek out the easy path. Get rich quick and instant weight loss schemes are promoted on television. Everyone wants it right now while not wanting to put in any effort. Therefore, it only makes sense that when someone joins steemit, he or she wants $100 articles the first day.
Secondly, people are geared to be takers. Get what you can...look out for number 1. This is the mindset of most upon signing up. What can I get out of this? Why is someone else making $100 a post while I make 10 cents? It is UNFAIR.......
Of course, the person never asks what did that person do to get where he or she is today? If you are one complaining about the whales and how unfair the steemit system is, I suggest you ponder this question for a few minutes.
I hear all the usual arguments: whales were lucky..they could buy steem cheap....there were few of them to share in the reward pool.....they are using the system to their advantage.....they circle vote and dont care about anyone else...yadda, yadda, yadda....
Let us go back and take a look at a few things those whales experienced.
Steemit is approaching 18 months of age. Many who are whales got involved in the first 90 days or so. They were "blessed" with being in it from the start. This is where their "luck" entered the picture. Or did it?
How many reading this article were aware of the blockchain 18 months ago? As a technologist, I have been reading about it for the past few year but only at a basic level. I am going to surmise that the average person had no clue about this technology. Certainly, few took the time to really delve into it deeply in an effort to figure out how to profit. Everyone knows what the internet is today yet this was not the case in 1993. Those who jumped on the steemit train at that time had some idea what they were looking at. That is not luck; that is called research, studying, and learning.
Also, steemit was a start up. Anyone in business can tell you the success rate of start ups. It is pretty poor. The fact that steemit is still going after 18 months considering it is a new site on a brand new blockchain (which is a brand new technological) is pretty amazing. How many coins do we see not make it past 90 days after their ICO? Yet here we are with the steem blockchain growing by the day. The whales who got involved in the early stages were not entering an environment that guaranteed success. Once again, they are not lucky. The fact that things are working out for them tells me they were opportunistic.
Finally, I read a poster on here who stated that he is powering down. In his time on this site, he lost $12,000 since the price of steem has dropped roughly 50% in the past few months. Basically, his belief is that he would be better off with his money in Bitcoin. Certainly, the performance over the last few months makes that idea impossible to debate. However, we all know the past does not equal the future.
The reason I bring this up is because we are talking about a 50% drop in the price of steem. This is nothing compared to what the whales endured. Looking at the chart, the price of steem was roughly $2.30 on Aug 1 2016. Over the next 90 days, by Nov 1, the price dropped to 12 cents. Yes you read that correctly. The price of steem went from $2.30 to $.12 in 90 days, a 95% drop (the price eventually hit a bottom of $.06).
Question time again: how many of you reading this article would have bought steem after a 95% drop? In fact, be honest, wouldn't you more likely have been powering down. Consider the fact that if you had 1,000 steem, your account went from $23,000 to $1,200. Now parlay that idea to an account with 10,000 steem....25,000....50,000. This is the situation those "lucky" whales were confronted with.
These are some of the things that the whales went through to get where they are. Are there some on here who do very little and just look to get "richer" off the system. Yes I suppose there are. However, there are also a number of whales who are doing a lot of things for the steem blockchain and this site. I cannot say I got a ton of upvotes but I have received some from whales and I am highly appreciative. There are many whales who are on here scouring the new pages looking for content from newer people. Thus, it is unfair to paint all of them with the same brush.
In conclusion, the next time you have the desire to attack a whale because they are "lucky" ask yourself if you would have loaded up on steem after a 95% or 98% drop in price? Would you be willing to put a few thousand dollars at risk after a run like that? Considering the fact that there are some are powering down after a 50% drop and I do not read too many posts about people powering up, I am going to surmise that most would have passed on ten cent steem.
It is time to stop complaining about the plight of others and get busy. People claim they want freedom yet they do nothing with it. On steemit, everyone has the freedom to post whatever they want, to amass whatever following they can, and to earn as much as those people want to give them via their upvotes. There is no censoring or an administrator telling one he or she cannot do that. It is wide open. And yet, many continue to spend their time complaining and wanting the system changed. An even bigger question: do they really want freedom or do they, deep down, yearn for Big Brother to make it all "fair"?
Thank you, as always, for reading my post. If you found this helpful, please give it an upvote and a resteem. That is greatly appreciated.
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