Would Steem survive or have a purpose if everyone just upvoted themselves 100%? Might as well be proof of work like BTC at that point.

Steem would still remain a delegated proof of stake coin. Everyone would be rewarded according to how much STEEM they have powered up. Witnesses would still be voted using Steem Power. Curation would be done using Steem-Engine coins.

If you boil the system down, Steem DPOS is basically another form of POW mining. Everyone uses their resources to get their share that their hashing power allows, this is basically how Steem is working these days, mostly.

DPoS is a form of PoS where not everyone who has coins staked needs to take part in validating or creating blocks. But the basic idea would be that, obviously, one use case of STEEM would be lost. The other would remain. Steem would have the advantage of not having direct transaction fees.

How do you ask someone to power up $1M worth of Steem (a high-risk investment) and then expect them to give almost all their rewards away.

By telling them that they can expect some of those rewards back from other users and that with that much SP they are able to support activity creating value. The problem is that the reward from such efforts is spread among all other SP holders.

Is creating a five-minute post about what you had for lunch harder than owning $1M worth of Steem?

Obviously not.

Our problem isn't authors are not being paid enough, in fact, I think they are getting paid way too much, the problem is it is the wrong authors and quality is rarely if ever factored in.

I think the main problem is that, like on all existing DPoS chains, stake is too heavily concentrated. I see stake distribution as the main purpose of author and curation rewards. The attractiveness of the content produced is a nice bonus. PoW chains do nothing but waste electricity. On Steem, content that has some value is produced in addition to the creation of a social network to attract app developers whose apps need users.

Proof of brain is dead, long live proof of brain!

I have noticed a clear positive correlation between author rewards and quality in my content. Across different content creators, stake and networking strongly affect reward levels but I don't think that's a huge problem.

It's really damn hard to convince someone to organically curate altruistically when the system is so flawed and abused right in your face. People have developed the mindset of protecting what is left so they can be assured of their fair share (in their minds).

It's not that hard, in my opinion. I do some organic curation. Even my autovotes are done merely for the sake of optimizing the timing of my votes. I pay a lot of attention the value of the content I upvote. One thing I'd like to get rid of is the reverse auction in curation. It's very harmful as it gets in the way of organic curation. It's next to useless as a rewarding mechanism for content discovery and widely gamed. In general, unnecessary complication tends to be harmful. Making the system more complex does not reducing the extent to which the system is gamed.

Just because you did something, it does not mean you are owed anything. Someone has to want it and see value in it.

Sure. Anyone not pleased with their rewards on Steem can freely try their luck on any other platform. Odds are their results will be far less satisfying.

Does any of this matter if we are just hemorrhaging our best users and not acquiring new ones?

Yes, because improving the situation requires paying attention to what is wrong and how it can be fixed. A key thing to fix is onboarding. After that, Steem should be marketed to app developers. With more apps, there is more to do and more people will come. Apps and their users can do their own marketing.

Who is going to pay the bill? We are distributing large amounts of Steem but don't have people lining up to buy large amounts of Steem. Someone needs to pay the bill or the price will continue to fall. We need to have an irresistible reason to buy Steem, the more the better!

Apps are key as STEEM sinks. Apps such as games where there are assets for sale users want to pay fiat for are vital. The more such assets have demand, the more likely the apps are going to need RCs which they can buy.

Just because the code allows it doesn't make it right, good, or fair. Steem mimics society.

Exactly. And a society without community won't work. If people think curation is a problem because abuse is rampant, I think the only solution to that is curation done in communities. Communities require people to have personal connections and reputations to uphold. Tweaking the reward math may or may not to good but I don't think it can solve anything in the grand scheme of things.

Would your mother understand how to use Steem and not lose their tokens? How do we make that possible?

I don't think so. But Steem KeyChain is a pretty good solution.

How do you explain to someone who never used cryptocurrency what Steem is in less than 20 seconds?

That would be hard. I could do it if I had 2-5 minutes. How do we get the next PewDiePie on Steem?

True altruism is not sustainable unless you have so much money it has no value to you, there needs to be altruism and greed, preferably at least 51% altruism.

That's why communities are vital. Wasn't the idea originally that communities would form around apps that had their own SMTs?

Just because you voted for something, doesn't mean you have to agree with it. Sometimes you just appreciate the effort put into it.

Yes.

If Steem went to $0.07 would you be selling or buying?

That's very hard to say. I probably wouldn't sell. But depending on why it went that low I might not buy, either.