Hey there, @cowboyphylosophy. Thank you for your thoughtful question! Wisdom or, more accurately, crowd wisdom as it gets used in this post refers to a rather odd phenomenon that Steem/HIVE tried to harness in its voting-system, but failed to do. Trust me when I say that I don't like to suggest a "cap" on earning potential. However, when I see people downvoting random content and "getting away with it" because "if they didn't that things would break otherwise," it is only then when I suggest if they're going to do that, why not skim it off the top, instead of the bottom.

Trust me when I say that reward capacity limits are not something I'd see myself argue for in the past, but the steem/hive system is unnatural by its very nature. And there are some power-players on this platform that go about smashing other people's posts, and some people think this is consensus, and it's what makes crowd wisdom work. They suggest that you should just let it happen, that you should just get fucked and stop complaining because without the "downvotes," HIVE would not work.

And it is to these people in particular to whit I'd say; "If you're going to skim rewards away from people and call it for the "greater good," skim it off the top and not the bottom, and in doing so, make illogical downvotes unpopular again. Trust me when I say that after I wrote this post, I had a miniature aha moment where I asked myself: Did I just argue in favor of communism? I then realized that this ecosystem we are blogging in, it neither accurately reflects either capitalism or communism. That said: if they are going to suggest that communism which favors "inner-party members," is a good thing. In that case, why don't I lobby for the common man's communism that suggests otherwise?

It's a bit of a mind frell and trust me when I say that I understand where you're coming from. And please trust me when I say; I'd normally never argue for this kind of bullshit. But the way the system got set up, people have normalized nasty behavior in the name of "good for the platform," when, in fact, it's a few "bad-whales" who are taxing minnows under false precepts.

But there is not shit nobody can do about it because they're too powerful, and anyone who tries can become a pariah if the whale wishes it so. They can apply standard pressure on the chain or pressure behind the scenes in ways you cannot even imagine. Let's say that I've seen some nasty shit here that would turn you off in a hot second, but I still want to turn this into a better place that doesn't drive people away because it's beautiful for tapping into human creativity. Thank you, @cowboyphylosophy, for your thoughtful and engaging comment!

Blessings!