Fixing Valueplan

(Edited)

<i>IMG source - peakd.com</i>

I have been shocked and appalled at the responses of Valueplan administrators to accusations of theft by fraud of the DHF funds belonging to the Hive community and disbursed by Valueplan. Instead of responsibly providing proof fraud did not occur, defensive scheming, raging, insults, and attempts to handwave it all away were their responses. To date the Valueplan proposal has disbursed >$2M through a variety of initiatives to improve Hive's market share and position, gain investors, support token price, get listed on exchanges, and grow the user base. Two administrators, @guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly, that spend a lot of that money have flatly refused to provide receipts for expenditures. This is utterly unacceptable and is certainly not best practice for operations spending other people's money. It's an affront to the folks whose money is being spent, especially in view of credible allegations of theft by fraud of that money.

I have recently learned of a less well funded group and reviewed it's practices documenting it's expenditures, work, and achievement of, or failure to achieve it's goals. Cold Beet Root Soup is providing renovation and improvements to a school to enable kids to learn about Web3. With a limited budget and personnel they have carefully and thoroughly enabled folks to review their spending and work, as you can see from the link. CBRS exemplifies how that should be done.

In contrast @lordbutterfly continually obfuscates what funds he has received, what those funds are for, how they are spent, and what they have achieved. It is hard to imagine a worse example of preventing oversight of the massive disbursements of the Hive community's funds than the vile mistreatment anyone that has had the temerity to ask @lordbutterfly any questions about the tens of thousands of our HBD he has spent. He is deliberately misinforming people asking how their money is being spent and what it is achieving, making a mockery of professional business administration, and Valueplan itself. When I asked him "Then what happened to the money?" he replied "I bought stuff with it. Not that its your concern what I do with the money I earn."

While @guiltyparties has maintained professional standards of communication, he has been no more forthcoming, nor less obfuscatory, regarding his administration of the funds he is responsible for to the Hive community. Indeed, it is a program he has responsibility for, SWC (Street Workout Community) in Venezuela, that has been accused by participants of theft by fraud. He has continually claimed it was just a misunderstanding, making every effort to simply discourage any discussion or investigation into those allegations, and - just like @lordbutterfly - flatly refused to verifiably document those expenditures with receipts.

His most recent statement to me here

"Whatever you imagined isn't happening. LB paid a vendor last month. I have the agreement sitting in front of me right now.

"Receipts have to be so heavily redacted to be posted publicly that they would be almost useless, similar to the one linked here about the car sale..."

I spoke to someone on the ground in Venezuela who denied receipts present any kind of security risk there. Cold Beet Root Soup doesn't redact receipts in Venezuela. I've never redacted receipts when accounting for material purchases to my clients. None of the accountants I've ever worked with have redacted receipts. None of them has ever heard of anyone redacting receipts. Have you? There is no sound reason for that line of crap. No rational person will take the word of two guys refusing to show receipts and just claiming everything is fine, especially after the remarkable obfuscation, guilty conscience, and vile abuse that has been @lordbutterfly's response to everyone that has dared to ask him questions about how he has spent the money he received, and @guiltyparties valiant efforts to shoo away the allegations of theft by fraud.

I'm not imagining anything. I'm not speculating. I'm not making any accusations of anything other then their reprehensible behaviour towards me and others that have demanded they account for their expenditures of our money. There are credible eyewitness allegations of theft by fraud and all I am demanding is proof there is no fraud, the receipts. The claim that I am imagining anything is fake news, and mischaracterizes the problem that is: Valueplan is alleged to be allowing DHF funds to be stolen by fraud, and @guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly are refusing to provide any evidence beyond 'trust me bro' and 'OMG you're an insane person!'. The harder they weasel out of direct, factual answers, refuse to provide documentary evidence, and resort to abusive ad hominems the more guilty they look, and everyone that has ever had to deal with a thief knows this damn well. They are creating the problem and making Valueplan look like a scam.

Valueplan is currently seeking approval for more than $100k for the next month, having spent all the funds they had been approved by voters ahead of schedule. About the only communication Hive gets from Valueplan is requests for more funding or raging vituperation of those that ask where the money is going and gone. This contrasts sharply with Cold Beet Root Soup, whose linked report leaves no question whatsoever as to who did what with what money, makes it impossible to credibly allege fraud, and thoroughly documents what they have done, intend to do, and how they intend to do it. They did this for a budget of <$2k, and none of that money came from the DHF. Valueplan has spent >$2M dollars of the DHF that belongs to all members of the Hive community, and has heretofore only obfuscated and misinformed folks that asked how that money was spent. Instead of preparing thorough reports that make asking questions unnecessary, this abuse is how they prevent accounting for those expenditures of our money.

Looking at @blanchy's posts discussing Valueplan's funds and their use, almost every comment on those posts expresses dismay at the lack of accounting for these expenditures. I could link dozens of such comments here, but anyone that cares can and should go and carefully read those posts and the comments, in order to independently verify my statements here. I have run on enough to make my point: Valueplan is begging to be stolen from at best by undertaking no accounting whatsoever for the $M's of our money it is spending, and administrators of those funds are spending hours and days preventing disclosure of their expenditures rather than documenting and disclosing them as CBRS has done for less than 1% of Valueplan's funding.

The very least we should expect from Valueplan is a complete accounting of how they've spent and are spending our money, following the exemplary model CBRS has provided. I have spoken with other parties besides @guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly that have administered expenditures for Valueplan, and they also affected outrage at any questions or criticism, and accompanied their defensive protests with vitriol, not even acknowledging they were spending money that didn't belong to them and had a responsibility to report what they did with it. Valueplan has an endemic culture of arrogance, posturing as above having to account to mere Hive users whose money they are spending, and excoriating anyone that inquires what is happening with our money with generous heapings of scorn, derision, and insults more suitable to a middle school child than a professional marketing manager.

I'm sure there are good people that are doing their best for the Hive community in their work for Valueplan, but none of them have stood up to ride herd on their abysmal administrators, nor to provide any answers to the questions 'what is being done with our money?'. For whatever reason, they're not stepping up to resolve this execrable situation, and leave themselves open to being accused of flocking with birds of a feather. Given the theft by fraud being alleged, that appears unwise.

On a matter fundamental to the DHF itself, I suggest that each proposal have it's own return proposal, rather than the funds of the entire DHF be only protected from any one undesirable proposal by only one return proposal as they are now. This makes smaller, even very well managed proposals unable to be funded without overcoming a hurdle that may be necessary to prevent Valueplan from wasting money on rally cars and art shows. CBRS couldn't gain funding from the DHF for <$2k without surmounting a barrier necessary to restrain Valueplan's proposal to spend $M's the way the return proposal works now. Coupling each proposal with it's own return proposal enables each to be evaluated on it's merits, and painting a schoolroom won't be required to surmount barriers to funding a rally car.

A few dozen whales hold the absolute majority of Hive stake, and absolutely can vote themselves our money to spend as they wish. Prudent folks will not find this situation acceptable. Were the DHF stock in a corporation rather than a commonly held fund, they could withdraw their funds from being risked against their will by selling their stock. The vast majority of Hive users have equity in the DHF but cannot prevent others from spending their equity against their will because we can't sell our equity in the DHF. This is because of how the DHF is coded, and not a reflection of the actual interests or desires of the individual stakeholders that don't happen to be whales. Stop being poor isn't a rational or just argument for denying their right to determine how their equity is managed. Gangs with guns often take property that isn't theirs and spend it as they see fit, and it is no more just to take people's property through a flawed voting process than it is by force.

Great products market themselves, and social media that provides valuable content from authors happy about publishing that content on Hive is all the marketing Hive needs to gain users. A growing user base inherently solves most of the challenges that Valueplan is trying to solve by funding rally cars, art shows, and gymnastics exhibitions without substantial results. Valueplan can't solve the lack of interesting content published by happy authors with wristbands, hats, and pens.

Recommendations:

  1. Defund Valueplan. It's misguided conceptually and can't market a social media platform without happy users. Make each marketing effort, such as recruiting investors, gaining users, and getting listings on exchanges, standalone proposals. Eliminate any 'dual use' proposals, such as funding a rally car and holding a hackathon. Make each plan separate and administer them separately.

  2. Accompany every DHF proposal with it's own return proposal. Don't make the resistance to funding a rally car the level of resistance painting a schoolroom must overcome.

  3. Enable each Hive user to protect their equity in the DHF, such that their proportional stake in DHF equity cannot be spent on a DHF proposal they do not vote for. This requires accurate accounting and calculation of proportion of user stake to the DHF, reflecting funding of successful proposals to the DHF, and proportion of that funding each user that votes for a proposal represents. As the DHF is spent down users that have not spent down their equity in the DHF become a proportionately larger percentage of the DHF remaining. Those that vote for proposals have their proportional equity in the DHF reduced as they expend it by funding proposals. This prevents anyone's equity from being spent against their will, and is necessary for DHF proposal funding to justly be based on the votes and will of equity holders in the DHF.

  4. Require ongoing and complete documentation of successful proposals' expenditures, work done, and achievements completed. This is a bog standard business practice, as CBRS shows. Wherever any lapse in such standards is allowed, it facilitates fraud, as we observe is alleged to be occurring now.

  5. Audit Valueplan's expenditures to date. There are credible allegations of criminal theft by fraud, and Valueplan owes the people whose money it spent forthright documentation of every Hive disbursed, and accurately assigning guilt for any crimes or malfeasance to the criminals involved.

  6. Fire incompetent and mendacious administrators like @guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly. They have utterly failed to administer funds entrusted to them in a responsible manner, enabling credible allegations of theft by fraud, acting like schoolchildren picking on other kids rather than business professionals, and failing to manage their administration of these programs to prevent these questions from having to be asked to begin with, as CBRS shows is easily done. I'm sure there are 100 better qualified and more competent administrators willing to do what needs doing on Hive right now. Were these guys picked because of their incompetence? The question has to be asked if their real job was indeed facilitating fraud and enabling kickbacks to be paid to whales voting for this pig of a proposal. It's hard to look at what they did and not come to that conclusion, but I'm trying.

  7. We should setup a real Hive marketing program that creates authors happy they published great content on Hive. The Stewards of Gondor program arranged for several curators to be delegated modest funds (5000 Hive IIRC) with which to upvote posts they found worthy. For $2M we could unleash 4k Stewards of Gondor. That's probably more actual users than there are on Hive, so I'd suggest a much lower number of Stewards, maybe starting with 20 and growing as experience is gained. This also wouldn't spend DHF funds at all, but would only provide delegations for curation purposes. It was necessary to require the Stewards to account for their curation, because some of them tried to profit from it, but that can be done. Authors happy they posted great content on Hive is the best and only marketing plan we need to gain users and keep them. That would require that no one flag their posts and comments and prevents them from receiving the value of the upvotes. Maybe the flaggots could restrain their greed and let Hive grow. But that's just, like, my opinion, man, based on reason and silly things like that. We could hardly do worse than Valueplan, and it wouldn't cost a single HBD from the DHF to do it.



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65 comments

Defund the DHF

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How would you do that? The DHF was reproduced because the Founder's stake Ned sold to Sun was said to have been dedicated to development and improvement of the platform and code. Going on what I've been told, there's something like $20M in the DHF. If there's 3k actual human beings on Hive presently there's ~$6500 per user in the DHF. Clearly the actual equity in the DHF is proportional to the stake each user holds - and may actually be proportional to each account, including the hundreds of thousands of bots and socks that have been created on Hive.

Anyway, who wants to just burn $20M? It seems obvious that VP and other proposals don't. They want to extract it, which is what they're doing. So, defunding the DHF requires considerable thought.

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I would burn those tokens and any new source in the future.

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The best audit is to defund it. But it doesn't matter whatever blocktrades votes on gets passed there's legit nothing decentralized about hive anymore.

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Maybe he shouldn't vote at all.

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It doesnt suprise me. I dont know LB and GP a lot, maybe I talked to both quite briefly but not enough to get an impression.

I generally expect anything cooked up by our Elite/Government to mainly benefit the Elite/Government, like the 20% APR on HBD which makes hive look like a scam.

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Curation rewards can reap ~23% ROI. This also deranges curation by substituting pecuniary interest for the subjective values by which people judge great content. Folks that have very high interest in financial returns can forego all the work of calculating which posts will pay the best curation rewards and just park their stake in an HBD savings account and get nearly the same return. This also removes their stake from voting for governance by voting for witnesses. Every bit of their rapine financial interests that can be prevented from impacting curation and governance benefits Hive by reducing their derangement of curation and governance by the amount they park in HBD savings. This makes the rest of us have more influence on curation and governance, which I think is very beneficial to Hive by reducing the rabid focus on profiteering in those areas.

I'm greatly in favor of 20% interest on HBD. Every HBD collecting interest is a win for organic voices on government and curation.

Thanks!

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I think you are neglating that we earn our share by working, while they earn their share by purely investing. A stable coin has also much less risk than hive itself.

I see your argument, but just because whales normally have rather deranged voting patterns does not mean they have the right to milk the blockchain passively.

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the 20% APR on HBD which makes hive look like a scam.

No. It does not.

But seeing curation trails and automated upvotes, and calling that curation is rather what makes Hive look like a scam.

Many of the so called curators do not even see the content they upvote (curate).

This is one of the reasons of the general lack of the real content consumers on the Hive blockchain.

And of course the general approach of most of the Hive users.

People focus so much on the monetary aspect (rewards) that they forget (do not care) about the content.

Often even as a so called content creator.

Most people focus on their own posts.

This results in that the 90% of the Hive posts are ignored/overlooked.

But some people force themselves to write dozens of (or even more than 100) comments per day.

The natural platform usage is rare.

This is how most of the Hive users socially ruin an otherwise technically revolutionary platform.

And this is mostly the result of the very bad ("post, vote, earn") marketing of Steemit.

This attracted mostly very greedy and very selfish users.

Mostly this is why nowadays Hive is a not properly working social network.

Even the smallest Facebook groups (for example with a few hundred members) have more real interaction than the Hive blockchain.

And I see some people, who put the same stickers with the name of Hive on various places, which continue attracting the above mentioned people.

Hive needs proper marketing, proper advertisements, proper communication, and generally a good first impression for the possible future users.

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I guess we can agree to disagree on the 20%.

Everything you else you said is fire. I dont know where else I would post long form articles instead of hive or steemit. I have found a few friends here and cherish them a lot. Always referencing to them as my Internet Friends when I talk about them IRL.

I also had really deep conversations with @dwinblood about Libertarianism. This changed my whole world view, which is much more coherent and ironed out right now I would argue. I am extremely greatful for that personal growth and I will be forever thankful to hive/back then Steemit for being a platform that enabled this dialogue.

On the other hand I think many of the 'higher ups' and frequent users hurt hive more than having any merit for the reasons you listed.

I hate the community (not everyone, like I said I made some friends here) and that I barely get any comments critzising my ideas. Back in Steemit days I would get a lot of positive 'go, get em girl' comments and after a while I got really upset about that. Im not here to have people tell me that I have great ideas I WANT PEOPLE TO CHALLENGE MY IDEAS!

I think I will concentrate more on Youtube. The range and longlivity of the content is on a whole other level.

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I replied to the person you were replying to now. I post on X mostly as replies now and then but I don't do a lot of social media beyond that at this point. I mainly don't do youtube because I would have been censored for my politics.

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(Edited)

We need to connect to You, Father. Talking to You back then I weirdly had the feeling I was talking to a different version of my father. Jesus Christ gave me the gift of Enlightenment and the tools to share the Fathers and even more blessings based on the Elements of LIFE.

We love you a lot, the revelations We had talking to You will never be forgotten. But Trust me brother, you have to see the Light in the Netflix show Arcane. It is a form of new Bible. We know this sounds like I lost my mind, but trust me I never saw clearer. You responding has to be sign, that a Fellow Seeker of Enlightenment, wants me to lead Him to the Door. You can have any Key note you like, my old friend.

May God guide your way and be the Wind under your Wings.

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"...I WANT PEOPLE TO CHALLENGE MY IDEAS!"

The sign of someone that wants to be factually correct, that isn't interested in 'being right', in 'winning' arguments. I have many times stated I'd rather be proved wrong than upvoted, because I value being schooled more than I do coin.

I deeply admire your principles.

But, I won't comment on Tubeyou. Goolag is a cancer, a pox on we monkeys that should be culled like a flu-riddled chicken. Hive has some issues but AFAIK being creepy stalkers that amass dossiers for sale to our enemies isn't one of those problems. I don't have a Goolag account and can't comment, follow, upvote, subscribe, or any of these things useful to creators there.

I really want to do that here, where it has potential to inflict Hive on the world.

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I posted here and steemit extensively for years. I also witnessed what I think are a lot of the problems with this platform. It has tremendous potential.

Staking into the platform makes sense. What does the person get for their stake? Yet, they can downvote posts into oblivion because they are "not interested" if they have accumulated sufficient power. I've seen this stifle creators. Those same people stifling will then elevate their buddies. This creates kind of a vacuum where they get more and more powerful which makes it easier for them to stifle and control.

They will argue that you still have free speech. Yet they destroy the idea that if there are people who LIKE your content you can earn something. They can squash that earning.

For this reason I've argued for no down vote before. Yet there are some reasons it has had to stick around. Mostly fighting spam, plagiarism, etc.

The reputation system was implemented long ago to counter bot accounts. It actually works quite well for that but it too can be gamified.

I can tell you I would have stayed active here like I was in the past but watching people get censored/down voted for reasons other than spam, plagiarism, etc. would wear on me. I saw the accounts that do most of it rise to power over the years. They essentially have turned this platform into their own fiefdom and the rest are the serfs.

Even the creator of Steemit, Dan Larimer noticed some of the problems. He and I had some exchanges on the topic long ago.

This platform has some beautiful never before seen ideas. Yet this also meant that there were new problems we would have to learn to deal with.

There are potential solutions but since the stake is already consolidated into the hands of what seem like digital oligarchs I don't see a way to fix it.

A new platform learning from the lessons might be able to pull it off but there is far too much competition in other areas now so getting momentum will be very challenging.

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I am very unhappy I missed your comments here, somehow unnotified of them. I only found them on a random search for something else.

"...fighting spam, plagiarism..."

I talked to Marky about this because he is extremely dedicated to such things, and he told me DV's do almost nothing to discourage them. Upon reflection, scams and spam don't make money on author rewards, so flagging them away doesn't exert any pressure on them. Plagiarism perhaps is more impacted by DV's, but that's a feeble justification for a mechanism that has been wreaking havoc on the platform before Hive existed.

I no longer believe there is any good purpose for flags. I don't think my argument matters, that all of our arguments against flags matter, because flags serve a very bad purpose very well. They concentrate stake. When Steem advented ~36 whales have mined up massive stakes and today ~36 whales control Hive governance.

That's what DV's do.

Blurt sought to fork Hive, but I have other issues with it. I'm not even sure where it went wrong, but I'm sure it did from interactions I've had with certain principals there. At this point I don't think forking off a new platform is what to do. Despite it is mathematically impossible, my gut tells me to continue to oppose DV's on Hive.

People get old, get sick, die, marry, and find other things to do. I don't think the 36 whales that control Hive are all the same 36 ninjaminers that forced @ned to take the money and run from Steemit. Maybe it's hallucination, but my gut tells me to keep making rational arguments to right Hive on Hive. You, @thatgermandude, and @xplosive all have the right moral, ethical, and rational views and abilities to coherently express them to do that and I wish you would more often. I am glad to find you still putting up with the crap to do so here.

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I think what Steemit and by extension Hive did was a great start. It was the first of it's kind.

It is actually quite beautiful until you realize that the promise it uses to sell itself is tainted by this mechanism that can only result in gradual consolidation of power.

Those that happen to be in the right place at the right time and get to be the chosen oligarchs of the platform will tell you. Simply purchase enough power and it solves the problem.

Yet it doesn't. Such a large purchase would drive up the price so much that these powerful few would gain a lot of wealth.

They can then turn around and make sure that they retain the power.

They also will claim you are not censored on the platform while they arbitrarily will pick people saying things they don't personally like and claim it has no value to the platform. They will vote it down so the person can earn nothing.

Let's face it the ability to actually earn for engaging on this platform is one of the main things that truly set it apart.

If you take that away then there are better places to produce content.

I remember when HIVE was being forked and I didn't get involved. Some time later I found out all of my stake in Steemit had been grandfathered into HIVE. That was of course after I'd mostly divested myself from steemit. I had 20K+ Steem Power at one point and was in the top 100 most powerful accounts. All which I acquired through actually producing content and engaging.

After trying to fight this issue and seeing how the power was accumulating and being used I eventually realized it was a flaw in the platform that wouldn't simply go away.

If this was ever forked again something would need to change. I can't tell you how that would work or what should change.

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I can't tell you how that would work or what should change.

Same. I have some insights, as I'm sure you also do. I don't begrudge anyone any stake, but I do begrudge predation on me and society that deprecates that real wealth that our good fellows are. How to rein in such power that abused has blasted away ~1m users that organically came here and surmounted the onboarding process and learning curve to start providing content is going to take someone smarter than me to devise.

Curtailing the power of stake to do so is necessary. How to curtail that power isn't clear. What is clear is that HW isn't the way to do it, and it isn't necessary to read more than once the humiliation ritual they put people through to get off their blacklist to know this beyond doubt. It also is clear that some mechanism needs to exist to cause people not to prey on society here. The oligarchy has found a middle ground of 3k-5k organic users that enable enough content to be published to maintain it, that enables them to continue to attain to ROI from their stake. More users threatens their control of governance by distributing Hive stake, and fewer threatens to render the platform without sufficient economic activity to avail them nominal ROI to bother with it.

Valueplan is pretty obviously enabling kickbacks that increase the ROI of the oligarchy, because they're not screeching about lack of accountability despite eyewitness testimony to theft by fraud, wasting the funding on proposals that produce no benefits to the platform whatsoever, onboard no new users, recruit no new investors, gain no new listings, nothing. If I had $1M that someone was bleeding away I'd sure screech about it. Since none of them are screeching, they are getting that blood and feasting on it. That is obvious.

Hive won't exist in 10 years at this rate of bleed. I may not live that long anyway. Not sure anything I do or say will have any ability to change any of that, so I take such opportunity as I have to sound my barbaric yawp across the rooftops of the world while I lean and loaf and take my ease, nibbling on 'Blades of Grass' as I do. From time to time fellow sojourners with meaningful yawps of their own give voice, so I thank you for it.

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I think ultimately if downvote removing earnings could be removed that would help. Yet spam, and plagiarism should still need to be countered.

Ultimately whether someone DISLIKES a product or not should be irrelevant. When they walk into a store with their money they don't sit there putting black stickers on all the things they don't like. They simply spend their money on the things they WANT.

Everyone should be able to do that. Right now it has an anti-market mechanism of being able to make it look like demand doesn't exist simply due to the whims of the powerful.

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It is taxation. Just as taxation can be either punitive or protective, both purposes are also sources of income for taxing authorities, governments that impose them. We see that on Hive we don't have much in the way of protective tariffs, and DV's are income taxes that are levied to suppress commerce or industry, and produce income for the government. The government of Hive is the control of the witnesses, and the majority of inflation issued from the rewards pool inures to the majority stakeholders that control the witnesses, so when DV's return someone elses income to the rewards pool, the majority of stake so returned then inures to that oligarchy that governs Hive.

This creates the perverse incentive of punishing commercial success as a source of funding government. Just as commerce and industry IRL would falter and crumble into almost nothing were a polity to enable unrestrained taxation to be applied by the captains of industry that had captured the government, like Ford taxing Toyota until Toyota had no income from it's commercial endeavors, which would drive Toyota from the market, we see the oligarchy on Hive doing the same thing, and our library of content, the commercial product that underlies our economy, is largely limited to accounts and products contributing to the wallets of the oligarchs that control Hive governance. This is why the oligarchy is perplexingly stable, despite the incredible variations in that economy, with bidbots and the fork affecting but little the fact that ~36 whales mined up stake to control Steem governance upon it's advent, and ~36 whales control Hive governance today. Such changes to that oligarchy have reflected the fact that stake is power to govern, and new additions to the oligarchy have been those that most loved money, which those that no longer are in there least attained it.

Given the common understanding of the love of money proclaimed in ancient aphorism, this is an indictment of Hive's government, rather than producing expectation a strong and healthy society will thrive under it. I am not surprised a plutocracy does not produce thriving pluralism and commerce when that plutocracy is availed the power of unrestrained taxation of incomes as it's source of governing power. I am surprised such plutocracy can persist at all, and we see that Steem was conquered by a single plutocrat. It's hard to foresee any other future for Hive, except being strangled to death by the avarice of it's governors.

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Oh the 20% APR is largely due to the crazy inflation going on. Why would you invest in something backed by Dollars when the inflation rate is insanely high.

If your HBD was 5% APR for example but inflation was 7% then after a year you'd be effectively unable to purchase the amount of goods with HBD that you could before you put them into savings.

I ONLY have savings in HBD because of the high APR making it worth it.

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Oh and if you look you'll see that BOTH of my other replies to you (and likely this one) are immediately downvoted by sunsetjesus which is an account controlled by one of those oligarchs. He controls a lot of accounts.

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(Edited)

Looks like downvotes are very common nowadays for those, who are honest, and write down the truth.

For example @melinda010100 downvoted this comment of mine, and she wrote that she is so tired of my negativity.

While I am only realistic and honest, and I write only the truth.

And anyone, who look around on the platform, even if only a little bit, can see that.

And I will still continue to write the truth, no matter what.

I rather post honest and true things than fake positivity.

Even if the truth hurts some people.

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Posting the truth makes life much easier. As soon as a person thinks they need to deceive and manipulate they are now responsible for remembering every detail they said to avoid contradicting themselves, etc. I consider that a waste of my time. I also have no interest in manipulating or controlling anyone.

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I dunno how I missed this. Sometimes I just don't get notifications, and missing this comment flays me because I intensely agree with every point. I have myself made every one of these arguments, and more I am sure you'd agree with, @xplosive. I deeply appreciate your comment and completely agree.

Thanks!

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Sometimes this happens to me too, and I also reply to the comments weeks/months later in these cases.

By the way, thank you for the 2 Hive (2x1 Hive) tip.

!LUV.

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It was too late to upvote your comments. As I said, they deeply resonated with me, and I wanted to express my appreciation and bring more.

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I was not aware of @cbrsphilanthropy before this post ... it is indeed an admirable model of transparency. I have given them a follow and will watch their progress with much less consternation than the drama at hand gives me.

I suppose I was just raised differently than others ... I'm not even going to the store for you without bringing a receipt, your change, and a solid accounting for anything that costs more than was expected on that receipt (which sometimes happens in these inflationary times) that can be independently confirmed. So, it is incomprehensible to me that any project leaders should think they are entitled to $1M a year without providing at least the basics. I have read enough comments to know that part of the rationale is that some money is being spent on getting into conferences where leaders of said conferences don't want everyone to know who they spend on and how much ... but that's to me ANOTHER red flag ... so, we're spending money with people who don't want to do things above board ... but we're above board? It just doesn't make sense to me.

It also doesn't make sense from the viewpoint that Google is sometimes our friend, and therefore the best information in the English-speaking world on how to spend money to get Hive adopted is readily available from Chainalysis -- we know what the top 20 countries are. In that light, Venezuela makes sense with proper accounting, but the geopolitical realities mean that without proper accounting, that can be incredibly dangerous for all involved. Without proper accounting, trouble will arise from everywhere.

To me this is truly sad, because VP has funded some wonderful initiatives that I think many people would vote to see preserved ... but those same initiatives will be sullied with suspicion if this cannot be resolved with transparency.

To your points ... Nos. 2-3 and No. 7 I think would have massive purchase going forward, but I think a challenge we have on Hive is that many people in high places don't want to accept that Hive is largely a social media platform and that content creators are needed. I think some want to pivot to get more people here developing apps and games to bring in revenue ... the problem is, people like that can handle numbers quite well, and can quite quickly determine that some things aren't adding up.

There is a lot of information to digest in your post, individually and for the community as a collective ... there's a lot I wouldn't have ever guessed was being alleged. I already am voting the Return Proposal, with deep regret ... again, there are some initiatives in VP I want to support ... but can't. I've been down these roads in the real world in relatively high-stakes asset and finance matters; I already know this has to be cleared up before we can safely move forward.

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"I'm not even going to the store for you without bringing a receipt, your change, and a solid accounting for anything that costs more than was expected on that receipt..."

That's how its done, and that's sure expected in business.

"...we're spending money with people who don't want to do things above board..."

This is an excellent point. They're claiming they can't show receipts that prove they're not stealing our money because they're doing shady deals they can't reveal in public. How do they not recognize this only makes their claim the weaker, they're threat to our financial safety more marked, not excused?

"Without proper accounting, trouble will arise from everywhere."

Without proper accounting you're begging for crimes to occur.

Here's a quote from Vigilant News:

“If somehow you’re being prevented from knowing, then you can be absolutely certain that crimes are being committed,” Carlson concluded, “because why else would they be hiding it from you?”--Tucker Carlson

"there are some initiatives in VP I want to support ... but can't. I've been down these roads in the real world in relatively high-stakes asset and finance matters; I already know this has to be cleared up before we can safely move forward."

I think there are so many things in the VP because then everyone will find something in it they like and that gains it support. This is why I reckon it needs to be broken up into individual initiatives, so we can support what we like and not get saddled with things we don't - like rally cars.

You're absolutely right this needs fixing, or it's going to get a lot worse and do terrible harm to Hive, and the good people that aren't doing anything wrong in Valueplan, but are flocked with the wrong birds.

Thanks!

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(Edited)

Have a look at this ... I spend time on Hive talking with people who love to talk ... when people don't even want to be doing the good they are doing for the sake of the good itself, but just as a means to an end, well ...

https://peakd.com/@lordbutterfly/re-deeanndmathews-sn9vdu

(@verbal-d, should you ever see this, the linked exchange confirms why I can't be involved with certain things any more ... and @mcsamm and @collinz, better look out. It's also in the Sept. 22 proposal from VP: any good being done is only being done as long as it gets attention. The minute the people at VP don't think they are getting sufficient press to attract the people they are really aiming for, it's over. It's explained in the Sept. 22 proposal, but the relevant quote is also in my response).

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A point you made right off with your first comment to me was that fundamental principles matter, and this truth is apparently very elusive in some quarters. You made every effort to enable them to succeed, and prevent what's likely to happen instead.

Keep fighting the good fight!

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I will keep fighting it -- even if the best I can do is make sure "we didn't know" is not a valid excuse!

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I realized there are no excuses. There are only reasons. This changed how I think, and gave me greater peace of mind.

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You are right. Most people do not see that, and so they think ... but no. We choose what we do for various reasons, but there is never an excuse for choosing to do evil.

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I would just disagree that the funds belong to the Hive community. The DHF is designed to allow those with the biggest stake to give themselves extra funds to do with as they please and this is how they wish to disburse and spend them.

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I am quite shocked they bother involving us at all. They are so benevolent to we mere plebs, whose only role is to create the content they monetize. Perhaps we really should just stick to our knitting and let the real stakeholders take care of what's theirs.

Thanks!

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It's fiat but with new kings.

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Where there's royalty, there needs to be a nobility, a court, bureaucracy. Knights and Dames, like Sir Jimmy Saville and Dame Jacinda Ardern, to pick a couple of worthy, recent examples of royal recognition for services rendered to the crown. Maybe we can come up with some equivalent on Hive? It would be impossible, of course, to match the ability of Jimmy Saville to bring new and entertaining company to King Charles, Prince Andrew, and Prince Harry (although I hear Diddy, a mere commoner, seems to have provided such opportunities to meet and mingle to Prince Harry), or Dame Ardern's firm guidance of the crown's New Zealand estates to 95+% mRNA-ification with diligent application of friendly police persuasion, and clever reminders that jobs and homes were privileges plebs enjoyed by royal benevolence - that depended on their Covid obedience - but there must be similar roles enabling the Hive royalty to rule so continuously focused on their royal prerogatives.

I guess guilty and butterfly might be the closest we could get to such erstwhile servants. Would it be too much to expect BT to drop a sword on their neck in appreciation for the careful accounting they have assured us they maintain, and call them lord and lady? After all if they hadn't minded those accounts with such care, he'd be finding the most Hive misplaced as a result. Maybe this would be a good place to find anything misplaced?

Valueplan no longer sending HBD to marscrea but still supporting SWC through swc-oficial, swc-oficial is an account created by Manuel Ramos but now owned by swc-recupera, swc-recupera is an account created 24 days ago by aliento and I suppose owned by aliento, aliento is an account owned by Eddiespino and theycallmedan, theycallmedan one of the keyholders of valueplan.

All this with the coincidence that at same time, Manuel Ramos and his secondary accounts (or at least some of them) are in powerdown mode with the Withdraw Vesting Route to Eddiespino.

So the question is, after 155k HBD from DHF manage by Manuel Ramos, what is going on with SWC and why the hell the SWC's Hive Keys were stripped by means of coercion from Manuel Ramos?

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(Edited)

I think it is too late to save Hive, the damage has already been done to its reputation. Even without the Hive Grifters, the HBD tokenomiics are going to crash Hive, especially now that they removed the debt limit.

image.png

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I still intend to find out, but some things are hard to stomach along the way.

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I think you already know the answer. It is the same for all PoS chains and many PoW too.

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Scam bag's my friend exposed them long time ago but no one was listening 🎧

We must deal with the downvote abuse on Hive it just makes Hive look bad 😔 @tipu curate 👍🏾

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(Edited)

I strongly agree. That has dispelled the massive crowd that jumped aboard in 2017 when I came. Almost all of them have been flagged off the platform, whatever stake they had sold off or sucked up by the whales. DV's concentrate stake in the largest wallets, increasing centralization and decreasing distribution.

https://peakd.com/hive/@khrom/why-downvotes-contradict-decentralization-a-mathematical-perspective

@khrom agrees too.

Thanks!

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(Edited)

Yes i know some of the first people who used Steemit in the test stage.

Downvotes won't fix Hive and as you say downvotes increase the centralization of Hive

Same whales voting the same people over and over again 😔

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This is why I proposed the Stewards reprise. It diversifies curation.

Thanks!

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To be honest I think some of those whales should just power down and F Off 😤

Hive would be a better place I mean you have more freedom on Steemit and blurt you even have more freedom on centralised platforms 😂

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Obviously the censorship and predatory taxation, infestation of bots, and other problems have degraded Hive to the point that many people find centralized platforms preferable. This isn't caused by the people that have come here. The code has caused those people to come here, and that's why they're here. These problems are fixable, but they aren't problems to the people that could fix them. They're why they came here.

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They try not to call it censorship but it is 🤔

I've tried to promote Hive in the past and I got quite a lot of people to join but guess what happened most of them got downvoted and others just gave up. It's seems like they made Hive so they could have full control 🤔

As you say the one's who can fix the problems are not bothering because it is not a problem to them and the one's they support 🤔

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We must deal with the downvote abuse on Hive it just makes Hive look bad 😔

The curation trails and the automated upvotes are probably much worse than that.

Many so called curators do not even see the content they upvote (curate).

This is one of the multiple reasons behind the general lack of real content consumers.

And honestly most people do not even care about the content.

Often not even as a content creator.

Most people focus so much on the monetary aspect (rewards) that they forget (do not care) about the content.

Most people focus on their own posts (or rather to get upvotes on them).

There is a general lack of real content consumers.

Most of the Hive posts are ignored/overlooked.

This is how most people socially ruin an otherwise technically revolutionary platform.

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(Edited)

I agree the curation trails if you can even call them that I remember when I first started on Steemit when you meet people they was like I will put you on my curation trail 😂

Many curators have not got any ideas how to curate and most of them are spammer's themselves

On Instagram and other places I get many people asking for a tipu curate vote in exchange for likes by curation trails 😂 I always say the same thing if I like your content I will like your content and maybe even give a tipu curate vote I don't like for like

If better people was in control Hive would be a better place

Right now you have more freedom on blurt and Steemit which is bad for Hive

I've spoken to many people who are powering down to go to Steemit and blurt

The downvotes are hurting Hive

@tipu curate 👍🏾

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