What you say is true from a technical perspective. What disturbs me is that STINC added reward disputes to the GUI after they realized they couldn’t do anything about the misuse of the flag tool. It was kind of a catch-all reason which allowed them to wash their hands of abuse of the tool. Then, recently, there is this push to normalize the use of flags by changing the GUI again, calling them downvotes and encouraging a culture of negative curation.

This type of negative curation doesn’t exist anywhere in the real world outside of socialist/communist hellholes, and it’s extremely odd behavior to attach to something financial. The more I think about it, the nebulous language in the whitepaper which encourages crabs in a bucket mentality but also discourages it in the same breath; This entire machination seems like a pretty twisted and sick social psychology experiment, and we’re the rats in the cage or the crabs in a bucket if you will.

If you want real proof of brain, you’re going to have to equalize everyone’s vote by socializing the voting power, and I don’t think you’d want that because then you’d be screwed out of the value of your fairly large stake. I mean, you can’t have it both ways; you can’t have proof of brain and wallet disparity at the same time. Let’s say, for example, you hadn’t delegated most of your stake, and you have a 100% VP at 7.71. As far as I’m concerned, this is fine. I don’t know how you came about your SP, and to be quite frank, its none of my business. I have to respect your large stake and what you do with it, but when you do something harmful to me or someone else, that’s where things start to get murky.

The machine of the blockchain is amoral, and it pits people against each other. It didn’t start that way on the GUI level, and I think when investors realize what it’s become, they’re not going to want to invest anymore. There’s a reason why socialism and communism fail every time, and it’s because people start cannibalizing each other, this is both figurative and literal in the real world. How this is represented on the blockchain is with downvoting.

I like how Steem draws creativity out of people, this aspect is very cool. The NewSteem Culture, however, is drawing negativity and envy out of people. The shift which is promoted and pushed from the top down is disgusting. It doesn’t work in the real world, and it will not work in the cyber world. People should have the opportunity to be generous with their stake, but it shouldn’t be some kind of mandate. When you try to coerce investors to behave in a certain way, nobody will want to invest. Then, all you have left is a worthless token that fails to re-launch.

I think what you'll end up learning is that the blockchain is a safe place to prove yet again that socialism fails every single time. Imagine if we had these nebulous rules which seemingly contradict each other in real life. Sure, you can go out to start a business and do business things, become successful, yadda, yadda, yadda. But if somebody doesn't like what you're doing or becomes envious of you, they can steal your shit.

The reason this doesn't work in the real world is that people end up killing each other. Fortunately, none of this will happen in the blockchain world, but I think you will see this business model fail, and how much proof do people need that this communist utopia can and will never exist. Encouraging a culture of sharing, value exchange, content curation, and appreciation is one thing. But this klepto culture of downvoting and the like, that'll be the end of Steem.

Content curators and investors alike will read the writing on the wall, and they'll get out while the getting is good. Then all you'll have left is a bunch of ne'er-do-well reward poolice officers/witnesses that'll continue to run the blockchain at a net loss as they bicker endlessly about the inflation pool as they fight over Steem that's only worth a fraction of a cent. That's your HF21 future in a nutshell.