Sold For Sugar .:. Late Night Blogging
I began to write this post a few days ago when I got triggered by "another curation project" here on HIVE that is based on classic trade... You give us power, we give you back a favor... Classic bribe, sorry, lobbying... 🙂 I did half of the post, took some notes, and now, it's time to write up the whole story...
You have probably noticed that almost all of my Late Night Bloggings are somehow connected to my personal experiences and certain things that I have experienced on my skin... I suppose that the moment of learning things from our experiences is when we connect the dots, when we realize that our current dilemma/problem/issue, is very similar (or even the same) to an event from the past... This time was the same...
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As a regular reader, you know my opinion about politicians, so this will not be a surprise for you... 😃 I was living in the Balkans for my first 30 years, and from the beginning of my "awareness" of the political, economic, and financial situation there, until today, almost everything stayed the same! So, that part of the world is still rolling in the mud for over 30 years and it can't go out of it... Yes, there are many excuses that people invent, but the main reason is easily corrupted politicians, and easily bribed citizens...
I remember one of the elections in the past (and many followed the same pattern) when politicians that were campaigning went to the places with the highest poverty rate, bribing people for a vote with 1kg of sugar, or flour... 1kg for a 4 year ruling over a country! Not a bad deal at all! When you offer breadcrumbs to desperate people, you can ask for anything in return... The problem is that you can't survive 4 years with breadcrumbs...
That's something that we all lack... The long-term vision and perspective... We always run to patch current holes and we can't take time to zoom out things... How many times I saw the saying "Why would you fix something when it's not broken?" I would just add on that... It's not broken, YET... It is broken, but you can't see it as you look at the short-term results and not the long-term impact... Until Karma comes to remind you...
Source: Tenor.com
Back to the people who sold their vote (was that "just" a vote?) to incompetent people... As it passed over a decade later, you can easily add that in perspective to get a better picture... Those people are still doing the same, but they complain about how their children left them, emigrated to other countries, and how nobody can take care of them... Complain about how their pension is low, how they can't afford to go to visit their children, how they can't afford to buy a decent meal...
You baked the cake with that sugar and enjoyed it for a day or two, but it wasn't free... The price that you paid for it is immeasurable! The most expensive sugar ever... Was that cake so good and worth it? It was sweet at the beginning, but so sour the rest of time...
It is all about the short-term vision and the long-term vision... All about putting in effort, taking action, and going out of the comfort zone...
Let's compare the story above with our beloved HIVE...
Same as delegating your HP to an already huge whale, which is doing more harm than use for you... Yes, you will get some "pity upvotes", which can be deserved or undeserved... But, that's irrelevant as your work isn't appreciated... Nobody looked into it to give you that upvote... We had those on STEEM with bid-bots, but with these eyes, it looks fairer than what's happening today in some places on HIVE... Before, you were PAYING HIVE to get an upvote and now, you are paying with your reputation and dignity...
If you write a post, you share your opinion, and you did a great job, despite having a different opinion than me, my obligation is to reward your hard work... As you did a good job! I will not hunt you down, search if you delegated something to me, voted for my witness, or supported my proposal...
That's what I CAN call a decentralized and healthy society... If all participants are fighting that nobody is censured, nobody is bullied, because it has a different opinion or an idea... If we, as pioneers of the decentralized Web3 movement are shooting ourselves in the foot by copying the "system", and creating centralized entities, what do you mean by how others perceive our actions? Is it a FREE SPEACH? Is maybe your opinion influenced by a promise of 1kg of sugar?
We need more independent curators, and who is more independent than you?
Decentralization is possible only if we act as responsible participants in society, using our vote/power, deciding about our future ourselves, and not by bribing others and depending on them! Yes, you can do that... Don't copy the system that is proven to be wrong... that is on its knees...
Thank you for your time,
~ph~
PS. I will be less active in the next 5-6 days as I'm on my way to #HiveBeeCon in Krakow, but I will still try to reply to your comment and support you on the road!
If you want to support my Hive-Engine witness node, you can do it by voting for @ph1102.ctp here https://tribaldex.com/witnesses... THANKS!
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And what so strange to me is that those corrupted politician become candidate again and again and they are elected.
Unfortunately, you are right... The problem isn't in them, but people who have a short sight and forget things easily... :(
I think the problem is being fanatic.
Very good analogy and very true :-). We can do better than to copy the real world here on hive...
Yes, we can! And we shouldn't forget why and where we are going... Many will try to mislead us from the right road...
Well said, you can't always do the same thing and expect different results
Yeah.... The problem is that people forget quickly and repeat the same mistake over an over again...
It's one of the reasons why I am a bit adverse to delegating out my HP. After all, those curation projects are run by people as well. I don't really trust the government and I think that most politicians are just empty promises. They give hope out to people but nothing really changes.
Yeah... Curation projects are run by people too... And some of them are doing a great job and I know 2-3 great big curation projects, but some others are only rewarding people who delegated to them, without even checking out the content... That's bad as it sends a wrong image about our chain...
Great post and very true. We shouldn't believe the promises of politicians. On Hive it does make sense if we can grow the middle class so we have a more decentralised chain. Centralisation shows us how bad things can be in real life and we shouldn't emulate that on Hive.
We have a unique opportunity to take part in "governance" over our lives, and what we are doing, we forward that to others and keep making the same mistake as always...
It looks like humans aren't ready to control their own lives and they have to be ruled by others...
I have pondered this and it seems that it is a responsibility to take control of your own life and therefore I see why some do not want it.
https://twitter.com/jewellery_all/status/1710043229276762138
This happens a lot here in my country
Some people sell their votes for salt, Rice and all. It is funny and annoying
It is definitely annoying, especially when you realize how much damage they make to all others who want to live a normal and decent life... Democracy has failed there...
And on a separate but related issue, we have the power to vote for witnesses, people who safeguard Hive. People who vote for a particular witness in return for 0.001 Hive a day are selling their reputation on Hive and forgoing the opportunity for support by some accounts on Hive. Good luck to them
Yeah, that's another good example of "selling" your skin for a cheap price...
This is very important and your analogy is great. I don't understand people who grow their HP and then delegate almost everything. If we want a decentralized chain we need to be able to reward those who we believe bring value through personal curation. That's where the real decentralization is. But many don't understand that or are selfish and only look at their own immediate benefit as in politics.
I don't know if it is selfishness or just laziness, or something completely different... But, I strongly believe that everyone should vote with his power and stand behind his vote... It will not happen, probably, but if more people doing it, the more chances we have to succeed...
Interesting post. A lot of us are in for instant gratification, just thinking about today and losing sight of the future. Vote buying happens a lot in my country and that isn't something we should do on Hive, there's nothing good about that...
It is a much bigger problem in the whole society, not just here on HIVE... When you don't have enough money to put money on the table today, it's hard to think about tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow... But if not, we will never progress and grow...
True words
Bribe for vote has been happening since long and even now it's happening when say that we live in 21st century. It's a bitter truth and such people win because people fall for some short term benefits that can sugar or something for example.
You have narrated your thoughts well.
Also I am surprised to know that we still have projects offering vote for delegation. This is not a fair practice should not be encouraged. When we can earn delegation reward for whatever delegation we make then why an upvote is expected. This should be organic I believe.
Thanks @ph1102 for a thoughtful write up..
You are on the spot about this! The thing is that projects are competing with each other and they want to offer MORE than for example, token rewards... As they can't give more tokens, they give something that isn't meant to be given in that way (upvotes)... That's like a "bonus" that will attract more delegators to their project, which isn't right at all... for many different reasons and I stated some of them in the post...
Agree that there is more completion to get more hive power delegation and every project tries to get more power. This is a common scenario but these projects should also try to keep it fair and they should not offer anything that is against the principle of community. I recently delegated to the SSG community and they offer a nice 13.5% delegation reward. In my opinion, this is the best available in the market and I am happy to this. If this project can pay such higher rewards then others also need to look for ways that they can increase the reward. This will anyway help them to get more delegation. This is just my thought but I don't know how a community runs. I shared what I felt like.
The curation rewards are between 8.5-9.5%, so giving more than that is impossible to do... I mean, you can, but you will be at a loss... I saw something similar where you get better APR but paid in their (not SSG, as I didn't know about it until now) token that is minted and going down in value... Which also, isn't a solution...
Anyways, there should be a clear line for delegations, but as I said many times, there are no rules on HIVE and everyone can do how it feels that is right... Maybe you and I are wrong...
@tipu curate
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In fact, the people are also crazy here, who make all these people sit on good seats by voting again and again and make them prime ministers. If you keep doing it, corruption will never end.
We need to find a better solution... that's for sure
Yeah if course.
Longterm planning for large, longer lasting gains, versus short term planning for small, fleeting gains. This is what they should teach in school.
Huh... That's on the spot! But, instead of doing that, they teach children how to spend before even earning money... :(
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BEER.Unfortunately that’s what you get with a social media network built around making money. People will be as lazy as they can to earn little bits of change not thinking about the consequences of their actions. I have been guilty of it too.
Delegation on the other hand helps small projects grow. One big problem is that people don’t support the projects that are trying to do some good for everyone, they just hit the projects that give them the most return for their delegation. I used to have people ask all the time what the APR was to delegate to my projects and my response was I didn’t care, you either support my work or you don’t. And I have seen the few who have stuck around.
I feel you there... As we are also "accepting" delegations, but with a difference that we try to give a "realistic APR" in tokens that don't lose value... Also, without adding that "special" value by promising upvotes as a bonus... Of course, the problem is that we are "fighting" against unfair competition, and you can't win... Until you change your thinking and your mindset...
I know that it's like fighting against windmills, but if we give up, who will spread the word? Who will be "on the other side"? I know that I sound like a parrot with posts like this, but it is raising awareness, and trying to shift the mindset...
I can't agree more with your words. I always say that Hive is created and composed of people and that's why, unfortunately, we find here the same real-life problems. Including politics, which stinks.
PS- I hope you enjoy the meet-up! 🤗
!LUV
@ph1102, @palomap3(2/10) sent LUV. | connect | community | HiveWiki | NFT | <>< daily
! help(no space) to get help on Hive. InfoOh, we do enjoy our meetups... Tomorrow is the "main" gathering, but we already had some nice meetings today!
Btw. Mrs. Mapple, you connected the dots right and found my wife on HIVE 😂 She told me about the comment you left... 😃
!LOL
You have the secret very well reserved!
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Most times I tend to evaluate some of the strategy I am applying in my journey on hive . I strongly believe we can make our world on hive to he unique than the rest
We have to work as a team, but keep our personality!
https://twitter.com/LovingGirlHive/status/1710568360101191684
Hmm I am a bit mixed over this whole HP delegation. I generally delegate to projects that I think are worthwhile supporting, and I don't expect them to vote me in return actually. So the motive is a little different hehe!
!LUV
@ph1102, @relf87(4/4) sent LUV. | connect | community | HiveWiki | NFT | <>< daily
! help(no space) to get help on Hive. InfoYeah, imo, that's the right way to do things... But, again... I don't create rules, just sharing opinion... :)