Solid post brother, following you too now.

>If a flag is rejected by the community, the flagger has potential to loose money.

Since there are no curation rewards for flags, a flagger is already losing out.

The solution would be, if the major stakeholders spent some time curating; rather than the excessive use of bots that result in overly inflated payouts.

Interesting and worthy post.

I've long felt that the incentive based model works well as long as it is predicated on the fundamental idea that we live in a world of "plenty." Alas, many incentive based models (including various versions of capitalism) seem to run on the "world of scarcity" model... which (when married to human nature) leads to fear of missing out, which leads to greed, which leads to hoarding... first by many, subsequently by a few, "Monopoly" style, while the majority end up "bankrupt."

Maybe that's just the natural order of things? Maybe I'm too idealistic, and the idea that we can have something *other* than a repeating cycle of building-tearing down-rebuilding-tearing down is pie in the sky. 

I prefer incentive based models... I prefer to do things to gain benefit, rather than avoid things out of fear of consequences.

Nate said:

> I would like to see more solutions in the form of incentive structures.

This is my favorite thing about blockchain technology and that's what I was going for with my [Flag Rewards](https://steemit.com/steemit/@inertia/feature-request-flag-rewards) article.  We can talk about what is acceptable behavior but if we don't express and enforce the desired outcome **with consensus rules**, the "undesired behavior" (if there is any) will continue.

In my post, I say:

> If you are the first person to flag a post that has a large payout, and the payout later becomes zero, there should be a reward for the first flag. The reward should be a 24 boost to voting power.
> 
> But if the post doesn't become zero, you should have a voting power reduction for 24 hours.

So, the idea here was to incentivize flagging of plagiarism and spam.  Stakeholders who just want to reduce payout of "overpaid" posts would have less of an incentive to do so.

Setting aside whether or not this is a good idea to implement, this is an example of an incentive structure solution.

Great piece on this issue 🤔 I like your measured writing approach.

The flaw with this and Ayn Rand's approach in general is that it an extremely narrow reading of human nature. However I do agree that incentive structures work best were there is little commonality between people. For example, we do really know each other here, much less so when new, so it works well in this context.

It take a lot more work to deal with the many messy community structures we can conceive of together than to make broad maxims about self-interest. The debate here could go on right down to self-gene level 😅 It can be well argued that everything, even seemingly altruistic behavior is in fact self-interest. Then what's the difference?

I would say that incentives such as we see on Steemit leverage the _short-term_ self-interest which is more about the individual and current needs, as opposed to long term self-interest which may be about long terms goals at the expense of short-term gain, or in the interest of a group more so than the individual, to gamble on support from them. Or something like that. But my point is that there will always be more to it and community solutions can also work.

That said, I think this could be a good idea:

> If a flag is rejected by the community, the flagger has potential to lose money.

The challenge is how to arrange it. @inertia has a good idea. There was a [poll version too] that looks interesting by @winstonwolfe, you two might have common ground on it.

> If a flag is rejected by the community, the flagger has potential to lose money.  

unless we also applying the following rule:
> if an upvote is rejected by the community, the up-voter has potential to lose something  

else we will end up as a community where everybody tends to say yes to everything, and nobody dare to stand out saying no.

can you please try to give understanding marxism and communism a shot before including it in your writing lmao

> If a flag is rejected by the community, the flagger has potential to lose money.

No!  That's a terrible idea, Nate!  Your solutions are terrible!  Furthermore, the whales will never agree to this change, so it's pointless to suggest such a thing.

Now I'm going to go back to reading only tiny pieces of people's articles and making unhelpful comments about out-of-context statements.

Indeed, incentive structures work on the base automatic self-interest. Even you recognize the community corrective process though:

> If a flag is rejected by the community, the flagger has potential to lose money.

The community can evaluate and review individual cases. The community is the one that is involved in deciding what is the problem and how to resolve it when it occurs. To get an overall compliance on the best course of actions, rewards and punishments can be used. This is a basic mode if living where not much thinking is required beyond the small circle of interest in self or the family to promote optimized survival even at the behest of others in some cases.

Enlarging the circle of identification to encompass others, and valuing them more than not, allows for a shift from a more ego-centric self-view and worldview to encompass a self+other view of how we are to behave. Recognizing that our success in cooperative survivability requires a concern for others as well, not simply ourselves or immediate family/friends.

Self-interest is always there, but it recognizes self+other interest. For example the concentration of power that people have addressed before that I think you do support. On a social media platform, this has been demonstrated to fail. Only focusing on self-interest to create something, without a larger-scope of viewing self+other together to create something, will limit the ability to realize the success of something. Not everyone can get along, that's why you speak and influence those who can be and not work on arguing with a wall that doesn't want to budge, and eventually more people are influenced and get the information presented to forma consensus. Spending time to get those who don't want to listen to listen and learn, is a waste of time. The community eventually gets movement into one direction as more information is spread about it. But... people need to understand this process and work to make it happen. It takes time. Effort. 

Eventually codes of conduct, rules, are established based on everyone understanding what is better for all as a way of living/acting, not simply based on their own self-interest alone as what is required to get them to want to do something. A larger perspective apart from personal self-interest alone is required. If someone is primarily thinking about making their pocket bigger, or enlarging their investment, while they don't consider the larger picture of self+other, then the proper solution and path to take is often missed from that lack of vision.

We start with self-interest incentives, and work towards a greater understanding of how things function and the possibilities of where we can willfully go without the primary focus on self interest, but not ignoring self-interest either.

What happens when a powerful member is mentally ill?

Hi Nate.  I just followed you and up voted your post.    I had a question... What happened to Screem?

>A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control—i.e., under objectively defined laws.

Who writes and enforces these laws and what happens if someone were to disagree about their "objectivity" and refuse to obey them? 

>A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force.

Who actually pays for the services of the policeman? And can one withhold any monetary support for this policeman's "protection" if they don't want or need it? Can one peacefully refuse to recognize the policeman's declared jurisdiction?

This is part of the text from my reply. 
I think it stands alone here and would be useful for discussion on this page.

You assert that you can be objective.
Now, what I assume you mean by that is applying logic and rules consistently.

This cannot be done with government, as I'll show:
Exhibit A:
The first Ayn Rand quote -
""A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control—i.e., under objectively defined laws.""

It does not matter if you have objectively-defined laws.
Laws are not enforced by objectivists.
Laws are enforced by hired thugs - the police, and the laws, regardless of how iron-clad they may be, can be ignored at will. The only thing that changes is whether the cop or whoever enforces it or not, and that's not going to be an objective decision.

Likewise, there is no possibility of avoiding this issue.
With any systematically involuntary action, thugs will always exist.
What do you suppose they are the result of?

Exhibit B:
""The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force.""

Let's translate that into what it is, shall we?

"The only proper purpose of a[n inherently unaccountable social institution that is defended on the basis of blind belief] is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence[, even though the existence of this inherently unaccountable social institution is the prime cause of something like 95% (the majority) of physical violence, if not simply the threat thereof to ascertain resources]. A proper [inherently unaccountable social institution that is defended on the basis of blind belief] is only a policeman[, someone who can murder people and get a paid vacation for it, as well as a defense of his actions by the general population], acting as an agent of man’s self-defense[, since being alive or free is a coercive and deadly force against man], and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force[, because taxation is not theft, and thus a threat of the violation of this very idea of not using force first, since it will be if the money is not given]."

Your statements in relation to the quote do not reflect the idea of the quotes at all:
"I defined government in these terms because I wish to communicate that it's not up to a government enforcer to build communities. It's not up to the powerful to increase the social and economic prosperity of a group of people. This is instead, the position of the individuals themselves. The whales are not responsible for the community, they are members of the community. They should do what's in their self-interest and only what's in their self-interest, as should you."

The rest of this is devoted to the combination of the idea and impact of the steemit economic design in relation to whales and the community as a whole being a specific portion of the internet, having gathered around based on mutual interest, which is a different ideological atmosphere.

I appreciate your post and this interaction. I hope you see you around again and to interact with you again as well. We could talk of much.