The is that multiple votes stack to generate rewards by some sort of consensus.

But that doesn't work either. 20 plankton votes won't generate any reward.

And with x² this got even worse. Only a small amount of big votes create rewards.

For multiple votes top stack to generate rewards you would need an even more aggressive reward curve than √x. Something more like 1-e⁻ˣ:

Which would limit voting power to a certain maximum.

That still happens, and can be seen even in this thread.

I don't. I see four comments with a payout and they all got one vote.

The post itself has a quite nice payout but that's because if a 100% vote from @oracle-d which makes up about ⅔ of the vote value. Add the vote from @threespeak and we are at over 90% of the vote value.

The other 143 are worth almost nothing in comparison.

If you want to pay rewards all by yourself, send a tip.

Tips never worked for because everybody is staking everything into Steem Power, not having any liquid STEEM to tip. A sub linear reward curve would have the potential the change that because you reach the point where staking more won't make sense.

And then you could build up liquid STEEM to tip. Or to use a cryptocurrency for what it is intended: to buy stuff.

The linear and super linear reward curves hobble Steem everywhere.