Looks like this conversation has been moving along without it me. :)

Well, the one fundamental flaw I understood was being written about and that I was agreeing with is that we don't really own what we use to upvote people with. It comes from the communal reward pool, and even with that, we only allocate what we control based on our vests. It's not like me going to the store and purchasing bread with money from my wallet. It's more like an unlimited expense account that is throttled down based on my vests.

How I see that as fundamentally flawed is that we're suppose to be trying to build up STEEM, but really, the only actual use of it is in things like bidbots, maybe purchasing STEEM Monster cards or the like and investing. The actual use of STEEM isn't available for creators and curators, unless, apparently, when the price is so bad, we get liquid STEEM depending on what SBD is doing.

I suppose I could just keep my STEEM liquid and spend time transferring amounts directly to people's wallets. Fairly time consuming, though, because it's not really how the upvoting system is designed.

Those of us involved in the creation of things aren't really trafficking in STEEM, which seems odd to me, since the social media platform is the largest and still the main draw, but funny how STEEM Monsters, Drugwars, Magic Dice, and maybe others actually do.

I'm not speaking for lucylin here. These are things I'm thinking about when I read what he wrote.

The ethical part comes in with what people do with the system. Is it ethical or moral to flag people just because you can, or to remove reward funds simply because they're in the crossfire? Is it ethical, as lucylin pointed out, to take away someone's account because they happened to do something wrong with their password? Since the code allows it, by code alone, the answers would be yes, but most of us don't live like that.

Sure, until payout, nothing belongs to us (which I believe another issue lucylin had), and yes, people can flag, but since there's nothing governing or preventing anyone from misuse, abuse, etc. (in fact, none of that is even clearly defined), they're pretty much free to do what they want, even if it hurts others. I suppose we could argue over whether or not anyone is hurt if what they don't own is flagged away, but based on most people's reactions, I would say that many would say that it's at least wrong to do when it's either flagging to flag, or flagging when the beef is with someone else or something else entirely.

I'm not convinced of anything as far as you're concerned. I was trying to provide uncertainty with my choice of words. I still don't know if you see any problems or not, other than I don't seem to be precise enough in what I'm saying. :)

Oh, and I don't know who's an intellectual or not. I don't think of myself as one, but I do like to think about things, question them, and figure things out.