Steem can serve both of these opposing ideologies simultaneously when you simply allow others to vote freely with their stake. Imagine a steemian draws a picture of A1 sauce, posts it and then proceeds to give themselves a big fat upvote for 50.00. One may think, how dare they eat their steak!?
This kind of behavior is not a problem unless you make it your problem, and if you make it your problem what you’re doing is trying to show you have a higher claim to their Steem Power than they do. If that's the case, how do we sell people on investing when they're ultimately going to learn, that you will be the decider of how they vote?
In what countries do we see dictators forcing people to vote for "THE" party? I’ll answer that: We see this happen in Communist dictatorships, where if you don’t vote with the party, you’ll get punished, caged, or killed. Can we even rightfully call it voting, if you have to vote as you are told to avoid consequences? I think not.
The great part about steem is you can have Communism. You can be your own dictator and bark orders at yourself in the mirror. You can impose a mandate upon yourself to vote as unselfishly as possible, or else there will be a severe flogging. How or why you’d go about doing that to yourself is none of my business, but I say more power to you!
You can also have Capitalism on Steem! You can write awesome posts and reward yourself generously with the SP that your heavy investment into the platform affords you. By doing this, it will give you many opportunities to grow the value of steem by being charitable towards others with your stake. You’ll cause new content creators to join and invest, and when they buy steem it adds value to both the blockchain, and the price of steem!
Yes, someone will at some point join Steem with a massive investment for the sole purpose to curate all day, and every day and that is fine and well. But I like to think of this, not as Communism, or their obligation, but people who are leaders, charitable patrons, well-wishers, or fans, who aim to fund the type of content they wish to see more of.
I think there is entirely way to much talk on the blockchain about coercing conformity and getting people to "do the right thing" with their stake. Instead of acting out in this way, perhaps we need to do with our own stake what we want everyone else to be doing. We're all just individuals here, and many of us are here for different reasons.
If we can be liberty oriented enough to accept our various differences and respect the fiscal autonomy of our fellow Steemians, then maybe we'd have more time to nurture the type of behavior we'd like to see on the blockchain instead of wagging our fingers at the stuff we don't. I'm not an app talented individual, but perhaps someone will one day make a dApp that gamifies quality curation with incentives.
"You too much focus on problem. You need focus solution!"^ Things that Mr. Miyagi told me in the multiverse.
To Steemians unpleased that not enough giving is happening on the platform, I would suggest maybe you’re being too charitable? Perhaps from time to time, you should be taking some of your Steem Power and applying it to your own posts? I wouldn't judge you for it; in fact, I think the only people who would, are those unfamiliar with the philosophy of liberty–and to be quite frank, those people, they don't count.
Poll: Flags or Downvotes? – A More Balanced Proposal. The image above is brought to you courtesy of Unsplashed!
