I think that making upvotes worth their real theoretical value for vote counts under $5.00 would go a long way towards encouraging more comments. The rewards curve currently favors vote counts higher than $5.00 and penalizes those under. So, what do people do? They pile on the higher votes counts in an effort to maximize returns and they avoid low vote counts like the plague.

Since comments by nature are almost always going to get lower vote counts, they don’t get many upvotes, and that, of course, discourages comments to begin with. If we want to encourage comments, the reward schedule needs to change to one that creates incentives to upvote them, and not disincentives.

I really like your reflection on what entitlement really is BTW and the dichotomy drawn between curators and authors. No doubt about it, everyone’s agreed to previously established rules!