The way steemit has been set up is as a censor-proof, anarchist community. As such, the network's policies are (partially) enforced by the users who make it up. Some users have more of a say than others: witnesses can choose to reject new versions of steemit, and they also produce blocks (which log all transactions). But the idea is that witnesses are kept in line, as if they do anything wrong, they'll be voted out. This is true, except most users are clueless as to how witnesses work.
More interestingly though is about this idea of stealing from the reward pool. The reward pool is a dynamic entity, which changes as users vote, unvote, flag and unflag. As such, the technical amount you are entitled to is determined by the amount of steem power you have.
This is where we dive into who has a right to the reward pool, and whether people are "stealing" from it. My personal opinion is that steemit should be orientated for good, really high quality content. This, though, requires a system where an objective test can be set up to see if something is good content. The minimum (a pareto efficient solution, if you will) required should be:
@cleverbot