Welcome back to another episode of why I want non-linear rewards back.
Let me start on this disclaimer:

The problem

The real reason, why rewards were so 'unfair' before hf 18 is this:

(taken from steemwhales.com)
A few accounts hold most of the Steem Power.
No change of the rewards distribution can change this imbalance overnight.
The trending page might look better to some now, but consider how many of those posting rewards go straight back to the whales, who sold their vote.
The Steem shares are distributed very disproportional right now.
In my view, this has been the main cause of problems and will be for quite some time.
There is just no way around it.

But we can not fix this problem by employing a broken rewards distribution algorithm.

That is the problem.

We can not fix this problem by employing a broken rewards distribution algorithm.

We can not fix this problem by employing a broken rewards distribution algorithm.

We can not fix this problem by employing a broken rewards distribution algorithm.

We can not fix this problem by employing a broken rewards distribution algorithm.

We can not fix this problem by employing a broken rewards distribution algorithm.

Even though this was part of my last post, I got this reply:

But @felixxx i don't understand why you think this will help against self votes for whales ?

If they have strong account than they will have enough r_shares. Do you think that it's a problem for them, to make few other accounts with SP delegation to those accounts to "spread" the r_shares among votes?

And bots selling votes could easily do the same. You "pay" for the vote and you get 10 votes from different accounts. Wouldn't that exploit the n^2 as well? the only thing you would do with this would be taking those couple of cents that minnows get and are more than grateful for them. Even if it's from themselves ...

But what you would get with this is, that "Steemit elders" who vote for each other would benefit exponentially as they did before. Wouldn't they?

It can be so frustrating.
Whenever I bring up this topic, I get the same replies.
I have to explain the same few things over and over again and whenever I feel like I finally established some understanding, we are back to But the whales ...

When I first discovered STEEM, it was how it worked and it was well thought out and it made perfect sense.
I could say: No, Steem is not a pyramid-scheme, because we have n^2 and that means we have a form of peer-review system for all content and only content that gets a consensus gets a payout.

This is not true anymore.

Now, the more Steem Power you have, the more weekly interest rates you can generate.
... Regardless of the quality of your content.

To explain, why n^2 would create a situation again, where players were actually competing for better content and would incentivize downvotes against abuse, let me point you to the original whitepaper:

The Story of the Crab Bucket

A man was walking along the beach and saw another man fishing in the surf with a bait bucket beside him. As he drew closer, he saw that the bait bucket had no lid and had live crabs inside.
"Why don't you cover your bait bucket so the crabs won't escape?", he said.
"You don't understand.", the man replied, "If there is one crab in the bucket it would surely crawl out very quickly. However, when there are many crabs in the bucket, if one tries to crawl up the side, the others grab hold of it and pull it back down so that it will share the same fate as the rest of them."
So it is with people. If one tries to do something different, get better grades, improve herself, escape her environment, or dream big dreams, other people will try to drag her back down to share their fate.

Try to make sense of this sentence in a linear scenario:

"If there is one crab in the bucket it would surely crawl out very quickly. However, when there are many crabs in the bucket, if one tries to crawl up the side, the others grab hold of it and pull it back down so that it will share the same fate as the rest of them."

With linear rewards it takes the crabs as much effort to climb the same distance themselves as it would take them to pull another crab down the same distance.
Or in other words, @ned decided to not use a bucket at all, and just let every crab walk for themselves.

If you want to create incentives for one whale to counter another whales' vote, then you need to employ non-linear rewards.

But what you would get with this is, that "Steemit elders" who vote for each other would benefit exponentially as they did before. Wouldn't they?

Perhaps they would.

It just goes to show, how bad some of the players were that the whales chose as their champions. In fact, most abusers have some of the highest reputations around here.

Sure, with n^2 we would have to fight other forms of abuse, but at least it would create an incentive to cooperate, discuss and curate content.
With linear rewards, the social part is just completely missing.

It sucks, that the whales have all the power.
It sucks, that those whales are all buddies of @ned.

But we can not fix this problem by employing a broken rewards distribution algorithm.

If you feel like having your comment downvoted today, feel free to reply with anything resembling but the whales ...