## It has been a fun morning, yes? Just look how much everybody is freaking out!

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![Screenshot 2017-06-20 13.47.36.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmYK18yo1FkdDWDDmi376WfYXLY6Lpyirws6Aono3KpF91/Screenshot%202017-06-20%2013.47.36.png)</center>

## Are these enormous payouts here to stay?

To be terse: **no.** Then why are they so high right now? Well, there are three possible reasons, and each reason has its consequences.

## Reason number 1

(I pulled this from [this comment](https://steemit.com/steemit/@logic/i-have-been-waiting-for-this-hard-fork-for-almost-a-year-equality-has-finally-become-a-reality#@biophil/re-dragosroua-re-biophil-re-logic-i-have-been-waiting-for-this-hard-fork-for-almost-a-year-equality-has-finally-become-a-reality-20170620t204406946z) I made to @dragosroua.):
It used to be that every vote spent 0.5% of your available voting power; now, every vote spends 2% of your voting power. So when the hard fork hit, a huge massive flood of voting power hit the system and **allocated a disproportionate share of rewards to posts that got votes after the hard fork.** But the rate that peoples' voting power recharges is still the same as it always was, so within a few days everybody's voting power will hit a new equilibrium where their outgoing voting power is about the same as it always has been.

Get it? Your votes are more powerful now than before, but you don't get more voting power. All that's really happened is that *now, you have the option to spend more of the voting power that you have.*

**Thus, Reason #1 is self-defeating. It can't last.**

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![](https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2015/04/03/18/57/electricity-705670_960_720.jpg)</center>

## Reason number 2

Linear rewards! This is what the "equality" in HF19's propaganda was all about. It used to be that it took a lot to get a post's payout "off the ground," but that the more payout a post had, the more each additional vote helped it. Now that's all gone. Now the amount a vote changes a post's payout is the same, regardless of which post you're voting for.

**You can test this yourself!** Post a comment to my article, upvote it, and write down how much the payout increased. Then refresh the page, upvote my article, and note how much the payout of my article increased. The benefit should be the same between your reply and my post even though my post started with lots more stake voting for it than your reply.

It's a little bit hard to estimate, but **my belief is that this has almost no bearing on the huge payouts we're seeing today.** The big effect of this will actually be much more subtle, and will probably decrease post payouts in the long run because now minnows can get paid thousands of times more by voting on their own comments than they used to. Mark my words: **self-voting is going to be the next big bad perceived "problem" with Steemit.**

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![](https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/01/27/14/29/cloud-2013221_960_720.png)</center>

## Reason number 3

**Draining reward pool!** I don't know if this is actually happening or not, I haven't dug through the source code to see. But it's possible that the huge flood of voting power has actually started pulling huge amounts of Steem out of the reward pool. I need a dev to comment on this because I might be making a big deal about nothing, but if this is happening, we're all going to be very sad and confused in about a week when we have to start paying back all of these massive payouts.

The problem here is that the flow of Steem *into* the reward pool hasn't increased, but *maybe* the flow of Steem *out* of the reward pool has temporarily gone up. Again, I need a dev comment here.

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![](https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2015/05/25/14/30/water-783355_960_720.jpg)</center>

Anyway, enjoy your temporary large payouts, enjoy your temporary powerful votes, and keep on Steeming! All images from [Pixabay.](https://pixabay.com)