Yes, I'll call that decentralized, and it's an awesome feature. "Bigger pocket" thing can't break it, because "there's always a bigger fish".

Yes, abuse could happen, but it's up to the community to sort it out. I tried to mediate on chat in many, many cases (that's how I've met @andrianna and the others years ago by the way).

It's very easy to accept tons of up-votes, but with down-votes it's completely different story, while both are important part of the same mechanism.

And apart from that we won't agree, I wish you all the best @jaki01