It's getting a bit hot in here at times. I believe it should be expected. This platforms seems to be capable of accentuating the good, and the bad. Some of the good it crushes, some of the bad it crushes.

Payout and Money is a big part of this platform. It seems to work. People are predominantly civil and there is not too much trolling. That is likely tied to the fact we can earn for our posts.

The Pool

There is a pool of steem power, a fixed amount per day that comes into the system. That which does not go to posts is distributed throughout the users of the platform in accordance with their steem power. This leads to the idea that returning value perceived as too high adds back to that pool and then spreads it among the people. Which if you follow that train of thought and really think about it also means that large payout posts draw a lot from the pool and concentrate it.

Why mention that?

That concept is at the core of why many believe they should be able to FLAG posts that THEY deem are not worth the amount being posted. Okay, that might be a good reason if you tap into the inner socialist and like the idea of taking and redistributing.

But we were not taking

*Source: pjmedia.com* Then it shifts to the statement that it was not taken. That was a potential payout. That's great if that is what your perceptions tell you. That is not how the majority of people will perceive it. Do a poll, I am pretty confident the poll will bear out that if you phrase it that your post says you were making a potential payout of $100 and someone flags your post and it now says $10, were they taking money from you that the perception would be overwhelmingly yes. This is my assumption, speculation, etc and let's call it what it is a hypothesis based upon observation that has not been tested. ***Yet really we can flip this on it's head...***

Hypocrisy

There is increasing scrutiny from community members investigating where these high value votes are going. It is possible to find cases where people who flag others for content being valued too high then have a pool of people they vote up to $1000+ on almost every post. The content is often subjectively average at best when comparing it to other content out there. This is a large amount of money being taken out of the pool. I have seen posts get flagged and reduced by such actors to zero or near zero while you follow their votes and see posts with a fraction of the work and effort in that content being elevated to stellar levels. The argument then becomes... the system allows it.

Technology

Not everything can be solved by tweaking the code of the platform. Many of the solutions to the problems will likely require us as a community reacting and trying to find ways to steer this steem ship. Not everyone is going to like where the ship heads. It is reality that you cannot please everyone. You can try, and it is not wrong to try, but the reality is you will never be able to please everyone.

Distribution

Here is the current distribution of accounts on the steem blockchain as of a few minutes ago. I pulled theses stats by visiting https://steemd.com/distribution for those of you that may have been unaware of it's existence.

If we are going to refer to the term Whales as the uber powerful who can award a lot of money from a single vote it would seem there are 51 of those as of today out of 98,015 accounts.

Voting the Negative

There is a FLAG in steem though there really is no down vote arrow so to speak. The Flag is used in lieu of the down vote. It can have little power in the hands of some or immense power in the hands of others. If I am a whale, or even just fairly high in that distribution chart it is possible for me to flag your post because I disagree with it or I think it has too high of a potential payout and drop it to a lower amount or in some cases even $0. Many people would view this as an attack. It can be perceived as a hostile action. It is ALL in the perception. We can condition our minds to make almost anything acceptable or not acceptable. Which way it should be conditioned is totally dependent upon you goals.

Investigations

There are numerous people that are not even close to whales diving into the blockchain and doing investigations. They are finding cases where it seems those with power are using consistent accounts to FARM wealth from the system. They would like these investigations to stop because they believe it harms the image of steemit at a time when we want to attract more people. I guess when you get enough power you lose sight of the things that are going to be more likely to turn people away from steemit such as knowing they can have a post they worked hard on reduced to zero, or a low amount because someone did not like their post. It doesn't matter if 100+ people liked it. One person can make all of those other 100 people's votes of support irrelevant. I guess those high enough in the caste system that are calling for an end to the investigations don't see that as a negative image for steemit. @ats-david, @bacchists, and @klye have been investigators in the past. Currently @ats-david has a post which is a ghost on the system with 207 up votes and 6 flags. It is valued at $0 and the top comment is calling for the end of these investigations due to the harm they do.

*Source: www.dailykos.com* In my case it is that one thing that has now stopped a dozen potential new users from joining steemit is not these investigations. It is the fact that someone can decide they don't like their post or that it is not worth as much as others thought it was worth and they can have that person cancel out the interests of others. You see the money aspect exaggerates some things... good and bad.

Exaggerations

Money is an important thing here. We like to go altruistic and say it is not, but it does matter. We've all felt the thrill of getting a reward for writing something, sharing something, etc. It does matter. People seem to think we need a down vote because places like reddit have one. Yet reddit can feel like descending into a cesspool at times due to the rampant down vote brigades and war like outbreaks that happen there. This is where the exaggeration comes in. We are on the verge of that precipice and in some cases have already fallen over the edge. Yet here not only is it a number showing negative view of something it can **perceptually** take money from you. Just like money in play is reducing uncivil behavior, I also am starting to believe this aspect of the down vote exaggerates the anger and reactions of such an act.

So what?

*Source: play.google.com* Some people will say "*So what?*" people need to get a clue, or get over their egos, and perhaps go read author X, Y, or Z. What are your goals? Are your goals to have a niche group of users that agree with you? If so then ignoring the perceptions of others and passing them off as a waste of time and directing them in ways that will enable them to condition their minds to be more like YOU is the way to go. Bravo. If that is your goal then keep talking about the egos of others and suggesting authors to set them straight. You'll relegate steemit to a small population, and eventually it will be unseated. It is unavoidable on that path. Though that is a market, and that too may be acceptable. Are your goals to leverage steemit and the steem blockchain and get as many people as we can using it, and change the world that way? If the answer is yes, then perceptions matter. Trying to make people think the way you do and ignoring the perceptions of others as unimportant is not only arrogant it is what NOT to do if your goal is to encourage mass adoption.

Expected

Given the activities that are going on, the transparency of the blockchain, and the disparity in power are you truly surprised these investigations are going on? If you are then you need to pull your head out of the sand. They are likely to increase. If you see someone say something untrue then challenge it with a post. Wielding power and smashing them does not help your cause. It just puts you in the cross hairs of future investigations. It also tells those of us with way less power who we definitely should not support as witnesses. We want witnesses who have our backs and the interest of the platform at heart, not witnesses who game the system and then crush people when it is pointed out. If you are gaming the system (even if it allows it) it is likely most of us won't want you as a witness. Doing something that is shady just because the code allows it is not something a lot of people will agree with. The system does allow for a lot of things. That is simply because they don't know a code based way to address it. It does not mean it is acceptable. I could hire contract killers on steemit now if I wanted, the code supports it. That doesn't mean it is right. You also need to stop running to the code as your solution, or the white paper when it paints the picture you want and ignoring it when it does not. This entire down vote to put money back into the pool is hypocrisy if you are then going to turn around and vote every single average post someone does to $1000+. I see the white paper as an idea. It is a starting point. It is the initial vision. It is an experiment. I see the code as @dantheman and @ned doing their best to come up with what solutions they can. Some things we haven't determined how to address with code. That does not mean it is immutable. It can change. That is kind of what the word BETA implies. Find the bugs, issues, and fix them. Well we have some issues... and they will only get worse as more people join.

Censorship

The blockchain does not permit censorship. The information is still out there. That does not stop some people from trying to censor others.

My Solution/Pie in the Sky

*Source: www.linkedin.com* Perhaps this is similar to Vermin Supreme promising "Ponies for everyone" if they elect him president. I don't know. It makes sense to me. When we're in beta I'd encourage those in charge to consider TESTING it.... see if it works, and how it works rather than deciding it won't work without knowing. Change the flag to something like this...

*Source: community.telligent.com* Remove the down vote for any other reason. See how the platform operates with the concept of up votes only. If you don't like something, don't vote for it. I actually didn't know the flag existed for about a week when I started using steemit due to how well almost hidden in nature it is on the UI. There does need a way to control spam, abuse, and plagiarism. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. There would need to way to dispute a flag as a false flag for people that attempted to flag things as spam, abuse, or plagiarism simply out of disagreement or because they think it is getting paid too much. Those people that can't give up their need to force their desires and interests upon others would likely not like being restricted from doing so.

Appeal of Steem Power

*Source: steemit.com* What is the appeal of steem power?

Long term investment and showing support for this grand experiment
You get more steem power without doing anything and that amount increases as your steem power increases
Your steem power determines how much you can reward others for their post
Your steem power determines how well you are paid for curation

An incentive for collecting steem power is the knowledge that you'll be able to up lift and PAY people with the results of your steem power you worked to build up. You will be able to support your interests. So if you are interested in some really obscure thing and you build up your steem power to support it, why does it matter if others don't like that topic? It shouldn't matter at all. If you don't like it, don't look at it, and move on. By giving people the ability to down vote those things you are taking away the rights of others to award value and monetary reward to the topics they are interested in. All it takes is someone of sufficient power who does not like a topic and they can effectively REMOVE one of the most appealing reasons to power up. This needs to be stopped. It won't work in the long run. Well let me rephrase that. It will work but it will continue to be a very hostile environment.