"For those of you who make blanket statements about downvotes being immoral, or a form of stealing, you are just plain wrong."

If downvotes are not immoral or a form of stealing, then the "abuse" you claim to be fighting is not immoral or a form of stealing.

"The community is doing a better and better job at both healing victims of retaliation, and dealing with the actual retaliators, and I applaud that."

How can there be a victim of retaliation (an act which generally comes in the form of downvotes) if downvotes are not immoral, or a form of stealing? So if a cop pulls me over and takes all the money from my wallet, calling it civil asset forfeiture, that is okay. But if I take money out of his safe while he is away and then redistribute it to the poor, that is theft?

"When the timer ends, voila, you have consensus and payout."

Consensus is a lie. It assumes that Steemians are equal and that they've all considered and weighed in on something. The truth is that, all Steemians are equal, but some Steemians are more equal than others. This is reflected in Vote Power. With unequal downvotes and upvotes the best you can get is a consensus of the oligarchs and the big assumption there is that they've all read the post in question. In the case of every single post ever made in the history of Steem never has their been a consensus on a single post.

Reward disputes were added to the GUI as a reason for flags after smooth made a subjective interpretation about the whitepaper. His interpretation was that: excessive payouts is a valid reason for downvoting/flagging". However, when the whitepaper speaks to negative voting, it only says that it is possible, it does not say that it is "VALID." So with that one minor tweak, five months and nine days after it's launch, he took something that was presented for the most part as Laissez Faire on the GUI and turned it into what you are calling anarcho-socialism.

Do you think that by promoting socialism as opposed to a Laissez Faire approach to Steem will draw in more investors? At any point in the history of the world has socialism sold itself to a group of investors that didn't aim to profit off of their investment? When/if BTC moons again how many people do you think will be sold on purchasing Steem when they read the word socialism? Investors Mind: Okay, so I'm volunteering to buy steem so that I can share with people? BUZZER! Wrong answer, that's not how people tick. People want deals where they will win too. This is why we need to respect the upvote autonomy of large stakeholders if we want to retain them.

The "commons" as you call it isn't going anywhere, and regardless of distribution, which will always be unequal and unfair, it will distribute tokens until 2035. There is no tragedy, the die is cast and the map is laid out. Regardless of what happens the inflation pool shrinks to 1.51% in 2035 and this is how it's designed. Presumably, this is to steadily induce artificial scarcity and thus bolster it's value over the long run.

I think the downvote reavers, if you will, should be more concerned about not creating an environment so toxic and undesirable that content creators end up wanting nothing to do with it. Everybody wants socialism until they actually get socialism. When they get it, they have that realization that ends up hitting them like a tonne of bricks.

I disagree with your conclusion that it's anarcho-socialism. I think what it is depends on how you behave. I've had my car stereo and sound system stolen before, and according to the laws of the jungle it is an entirely possible thing that people can do to each other. The question is, is it a valid thing to do? That's debatable. The validly of anything is debatable and entirely subjective. What I did not do was come to the conclusion that I live in an anarcho-socialist society.

I wonder about the guy who stole my stereo. I wonder if he felt that what he did was just because he did it. Then I also wonder, if it happened to him, would he feel as if though some sort of injustice occurred. If your going to go around flagging people and pretending that it's not immoral. Then for god's sake don't cloak yourself in the cape of an "abuse" fighter and then say that revenge downvotes are harmful. Those downvotes can't be any more harmful than your downvotes can they?