That's the very reason I proposed making profiteering from even author rewards unprofitable, to wit:
>"...no one should live on less than 3% of median income, nor attain to more than 300%..."
My first reaction to this idea was to reject it, because we all want posts that reward us hundreds of Steem. However, only very few authors ever have a post that gets this kind of reward, and most of them are for developing an app, or something similar, rather than being simply audacious and remarkable content. Those kinds of things can be rewarded via other mechanisms, which I touch on briefly below. For ordinary posts, such payouts are as scarce as hen's teeth.
In his daily posts @arcange provides data, and has been since before I started here. Amongst that data is median post payout. For April here is the chart he published today:
Essentially, the median payout on a post is less than .25 Steem. So an algorithm that adjusted upvotes prior to payout to increase the amount of rewards to at least 3% of that, or .075 Steem, or down to no more than .75 Steem, would eliminate vote selling by eliminating significant payouts. This particular ratio is just what Huey Long proposed for income, as applied to current actual median post payout data, and not the actual point. The point is the mechanism would eliminate self voting, circle jerking, and vote selling/delegation as means of extracting rent with stake from the rewards pool that should be marketing Steem instead. The only reason left to upvote a post would be actual curation (which for most people is already why they upvote posts, since their curation rewards are utterly inconsequential, as is obvious from the median author reward on posts this month. My curation rewards to date (calculated from Steemworld data) are ~4% of my author rewards (which figures I actually do not believe. I am not a dolphin, and I would be if Steemworld data was correct), and 4% of .25 Steem is laughably negligible, even for desperately poor people) - for content qualities judged subjectively by voters - and not for any financial reward.
No more bribes, profiteering, or any such thing would degrade actual curation and encouraging authors producing good content that attracts eyeballs and Steem buyers to the platform. Since the spread of rewards is two orders of magnitude (1000%), substantial difference between the lowest payouts and the highest allows higher quality posts to be rewarded substantially more than lesser quality posts. Is any author really 1000% better than even the worst? Maybe, and, again, this ratio isn't my actual point, and certainly might be more or less wide, as I indicate below.
The median payout is so low that no substantial stakeholder would even contemplate bothering with amounts that small. That makes it particularly instructive to them: that median payout is what most people are paid out on their posts. That's what median means. That is what you are expecting to draw in new users of Steem. I reckon we can do better, and get better results.
The average payout is a little better:
Using this as the basis of our algorithm might be more acceptable to even good authors, many of whom are resigned to payouts of this caliber presently - because botvotes skew the average so far from the median. If we take the high of three Steem at the beginning of the month as our key figure, then at payout posts would be rewarded from 1 Steem to 9 Steem.
This is utterly useless and completely laughable - without a mechanism that enables substantial stakeholders to profit from their holdings. That is why I propose a mechanism to do that:
>"...dividends from delegating to development projects..."
Historically, investors purchased equity in an endeavor and undertook to increase the value of the vehicle to attain capital gains, and creating new dApps, improving Steem, and similar undertakings are the means that can make Steem worth more money, and create capital gains. Creating a dividend stream from such delegations creates a beneficial impact on Steem, the community, and devs, as well as reverses the negative impact of extracting resources by degrading curation that has been the status quo to date. I don't even provide any estimates at all of effective rates of return, because I'm incompetent to do so, and this is just a concept that is meant to provide a framework that such details can be provided for by better minds than mine. Yours perhaps.
So the concept here is simply to eliminate profiteering by extraction of resources Steem depends on to grow it's market, and replace that income stream for substantial stakeholders with dividends for causing development of Steem and the ecosystem that makes it valuable. @steemalliance has just been provided a framework (via stake weighted vote on @dpoll) for the foundation that will choose developments to fund to effect that purpose, <a href="https://steempeak.com/steemalliance/@steemalliance/official-results-of-foundation-structure-election-the-merger">The Merger</a>, so stakeholders would be able to choose from a list of approved developments to fund, or propose ones not on the list, I suppose, and @blocktrades has completed the <a href="https://steempeak.com/blocktrades/@blocktrades/steem-proposal-system-will-be-completed-on-monday">Steem Proposal System</a> development itself, the DAO, so the means of effecting this dividend stream seems to have only now eventuated. Timely, serendipitously.
We hear often the refrain 'code is law' from folks intent on nothing more important than their ROI. Since they don't actually care about the reason for the code, or what other affect it has, executing code that allows them to generate ROI for being beneficial to the platform and community, won't hurt them. After all, 'code is law'.
Enabling those posts that are made to fund development, like the recent announcement by @aggroed of <a href="https://steempeak.com/steem-engine/@aggroed/scot-testing-underway-are-you-ready-for-your-own-token-that-can-distribute-like-steem">SCOT testing being underway</a>, or @steemchiller's weekly <a href="https://steempeak.com/steemworld/@steemchiller/steemworld-weekly-support-31">funding arrangement for Steemworld</a>, to be replaced by funding via the DAO as approved by The Merger when it gets to work, will eliminate that particular need to provide greater payout on that kind of post. Other examples of posts of significance I am more than willing to entertain discussion of.
By these mechanisms, not the particular payouts I mention, which are but mathematical examples of the idea (based on current data), I reckon the harmful extraction of rewards intended to market Steem can be replaced with dividends for beneficial application of stake, and votes on posts can become actual curation, undistorted by mere financial machinations and thus actually support Proof of Brain.
Thank you in advance for your consideration.