RE: Improving the Economics of Steem: A Community Proposal

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RE: Improving the Economics of Steem: A Community Proposal

sorin.cristescu in #steem • 7 years ago

My opinion, backed by years and years of research (by others) is that economic improvement cannot fix what is at heart a social problem.

Thinking you will find a solution to the harm wrought by those who act in bad faith by tweaking the economics is illusory.

^{Hirschman's analysis, like that of most political philosophers, underlines the existence of two dimensions of the human soul. Two dimensions which are complementary: passions ("social"), on one hand, interests ("economic") on the other hand. It is essential to keep in mind at all times this bi-dimensionality of humans and human groups}

The only way to protect the platform and the honest people from the harm and exploitation of "bad actors" is by working on the social dimension. It's hard, it will never work perfectly but it has been proven throughout human history to be the only viable way.

What does that imply: create "culture" - federate people around a common goal (needs to be quite generic) and set of values. Think "Agile manifesto" for instance, if you want a concrete example of what I mean.

Then register "communities" which can each "translate" the generic goal and set of values into more specific goals and a more elaborated set of values and create a framework for communities to register and regularly be challenged to prove they are still there and doing their job.

Then let each community "shepherd" its members and take responsibility for them and their behaviors.

Ultimately, it will depend on users assuming personal responsibility for doing what is good and refraining, of their own volition, from doing what is evil. This is what, for instance, Jordan B. Peterson says.

I reflected on this before already, in this short post: Barcelona and thoughts about decency

No economic mechanism can save us if people on Steem do not display a sense of decency.

That implies caring 80% for your own interests but also 20% for the interests of the others here and of the platform

I'll try to write at least one post elaborating on this position further

7 years ago in #steem by sorin.cristescu

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valued-customer 7 years ago (edited)

I agree that society is critical to solving the problems of the community, but eliminating financial incentives to harm society is not ineffective. Profiteers are NEVER going to act as you recommend, and will respond to financial incentives that financially reward them for benefitting the community.

It's facile to simply appeal to their better nature. Some people have no better nature. They're called sociopaths. They're broken, and the best thing we can to is to implement financial incentives for them to act beneficially. Further, the lure of financial gain corrupts even non-sociopaths, and I think this applies to @trafalgar.

While we should grow our community in all the ways you suggest, doing so will be useless unless we also implement appropriate financial incentives to encourage beneficial acts by those susceptible to the lure of mammon, or are incapable of proper socialization because they're sociopaths.

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iflagtrash 7 years ago

I flag trash. You have received a flag.

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sorin.cristescu 7 years ago

Yes, what you write is not false. There is a degree of evil in each one of us. We are all doing a permanent balancing act between our righteous self and our uglier urges. We need an economic system which encourages people to act beneficially. My position is that, absent a social dimension, such a system does not exist. Even if you modify the current one and close the avenues of abuse it has exposed, its replacement will reveal relatively quickly completely different weaknesses and new possibilities to be abused its designers have simply not anticipated.

The only way to "plug the holes" in an economic system (albeit incompletely ! ) is to add a social dimension, a shared sense of "good" and "bad". It will not completely eradicate bad behavior but it stands a chance of bringing it under control, below a threshold which the system as a whole can cope with.

One of the first things I proposed, and I think at least one of the future communities will be built on that, is personal responsibility. That implies voluntarily linking your steem persona with your real life identity.

I am Sorin Cristescu in real life and I am sorin.cristescu on steem. I do that because I want to send a message: I pledge to act with a sense of responsibility and do things that I will not be ashamed of in the real life. I understand that might not appeal to everyone here and I remember reading your arguments against that. Fair enough. When communities will be around, I imagine we'll belong to different communities.

But let's not forget that there is an English proverb saying "the best disinfectant is sunlight" (or something like that). That is because exposing bad behavior from an actor (provided the actor has a sense of belonging to a community of values) usually leads to that actor decreasing the number of his bad actions or stopping acting evil altogether. "Naming and shaming" it is also called. For that to work, I agree, you need a commonly agreed definition of "shame". But once such a system is in place, it is effective, it significantly decreases abuse.

You can then bring abuse even below that level with some kind of an "enforcement entity" (a "police" of some kind). Here perhaps the "free downvotes" or "downvoting pool" might help, but it is essential that it be paired with an elaborate set of "rules of engagement".

I don't see any realization of that in those peddling the idea of "free downvotes" or "downvote pool". I've only seen people advocating such a thing implying that every user should be free to use them as (s)he sees fit. That is a recipe for chaos and disaster, like the old "wild west" (everyone is a police onto oneself) which had to be tamed to make life livable.

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valued-customer 7 years ago

I agree we will be in different communities, but also that does not mean we cannot agree on truths we both accept. I have been tortured and held as a slave by the very kinds of parties you consider beneficial. I will fight such parties to the limits of my life.

The 'wild west' is difficult to grasp for someone that has not been free. It is true that criminals take advantage of defenseless people in the absence of police - but it is the existence of police that convinces free people to leave their security in the hands of others, and this generates opportunity for criminals to prey on them.

Worse is the horrifying depredations of maniacs and criminals in present 'civilized' cities, where people are forcefully disarmed and helpless to protect themselves, and where police have zero actual liability to protect them. Worst of all is when those criminals are the actual police you expect to protect you, and that criminalize any attempt to protect yourself from them, or tell others the truth.

Let me know if your opinion changes after you have been beaten by cops. Mine did not. I already knew they were thugs from my earliest youth.

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iflagtrash 7 years ago

I flag trash. You have received a flag.

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trafalgar 7 years ago

Yes you've mentioned before that the economic incentives can't affect behavior at all, only culture

Grant me one thing though, just one thing: it's at least trivially easy to come up with a worse economic system correct? Here, 100% curation, n^10 rewards curve, infinite downvotes and the ability to send people negative funds. Surely that's worse right?

If a society decided to reward anyone who masturbated in public $1000 each time they did it instead of punishing them, surely it'll be no surprise to see an increase of public indecency. And a very sound way of trying to stop this would be to repeal the law the rewarded people for it right? At least on some level there are better and worse economic rules that have a very real effect on behavior?

In this case, doesn't it stand to reason that at least some of the unwanted behavior on here are responses to economic incentives and to some extent can be altered by changing these incentives?

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sorin.lite 7 years ago

No, I never said that "the economic incentives can't affect behavior at all", you want so much to "be right" that you feel the need to strawman my argument.

On the contrary, I believe economic incentives are the PRIMARY driver of human behaviour. Now please read again and try to understand what I mean

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trafalgar 7 years ago

then what compels you to believe that in this particularly instance economic reform is not apposite if it's the primary driver of behavior? I dont understand your argument and would wager not many do

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sorin.cristescu 7 years ago

Indeed, it is a complex argument, I can only fault myself for not being able to explain more clearly.

I am of the opinion (and I believe @yabapmatt has a similar opinion) that time is of the essence. We, steem, do not have all the time we want to keep experimenting. We have a clear interest to focus on implementing the best, most effective changes sooner rather than later.

Thus I do not claim that the current economic system of steem cannot be improved upon, I'm pretty sure it can, but that is not the same to say that "it's easy to come up with a better one".

Even change has a cost. Stability in the rules of economic interaction has value. In my opinion, spending effort (and time) in order to improve the economic system of steem a little is a serious strategic mistake and should not be done. In a sense, when you have a lot of people relying on a set of rules for a great many economic and social interactions, it often makes sense to stick with a less-than-perfect system than to improve just a little. You want to be reasonably sure that the changes will represent a significant improvement
Without serious testing, it is very hard to predict how a complex socio-economic system with 200 000 users will react to any set of changes in incentives. Absent a large scale trial (which is almost impossible to organize), there is a serious risk that what we think will happen does not quite materialize. And on the contrary, a host of "unintended consequences" and unexpected behaviors surface ... because humans are very complicated and hard to predict, especially in large groups. BTW, this phenomenon plagued communism, which some people thought it would work, before it was tried out for real ...
Regardless of whether your changes or a different set of changes to the economic rules will bring an improvement, something will still be missing: the social dimension which is almost completely absent: steem is primarily defined as an economic proposition (blog to earn, play games to earn, etc.)

So what I'm saying that, when time is of the essence, when we should focus our efforts and channel scarce resources into the most effective evolution of the global system, it is a lot more efficient to unite and take care first of the social dimension at the cost of putting up with an imperfect (yet almost workable and, what's more, known) economic system.

Keep the economic system as it is (for the time being at least) and work on creating a social fabric first and foremost. Once that is built, you might notice that the economic system is good enough. Or, if not, you can still come back to perhaps changing it, but starting now from a more solid base

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