If we were to have the reward pool taken away, the thing that could change the world for the better in a real and meaningful way will also have been taken away.
Steem is to be passed on to others who will pass it on.
The best use scenario I see is: Invite philanthropic investors to invest in Steem for the purpose of funding real world community projects with votes.
Any thoughts to share about that idea? What glaring obstacles am I not seeing?
There are better, more effective, more direct ways to "pass it on" than with upvotes that can be taken away on a whim.
That is true, however there is none so cost effective than a vote of say $250 ten times per day. About 20 million Steem
With that much power, defense would not be that much of a problem.
If you give any account 20 million steem-power, it's going to go rogue.
That is the ONLY lesson that the "Lord-of-the-RINGS" story teaches us.
If you think "if only a truly good person had this incredible power, then everything would be fixed", then you don't understand how POWER works.
That's also the entire point of Alan Moore's "The Watchmen". IT IS BETTER FOR HUMANS TO HAVE NO SUPER-POWERS, BECAUSE NO MATTER HOW "GOOD" SOMEONE SEEMS, GIVING THEM THE ABILITY TO BOOST OR BAN WHOMEVER THEY PLEASE ON A WHIM LEADS TO FASCISM.
People seem to forget (or have never been informed) that Joseph Stalin was considered by his peers to be the most reasonable, humble and honest of men, and that's the ONLY reason they granted him and him alone VAST SWEEPING "TEMPORARY" POWER.
George Washington's greatest accomplishment was REFUSING to make himself a de facto KING.
I am not really into the hero worship thing.
i see it more as developing or amplification of the frequency of collaborative creation.
Well, @steemyoda controlled a million steem-power (now 760,000) and they just got downvoted into negative territory (-3)...
And apparently now you can be automatically censored (suppressed) if you're on "blacklists" or if you post using a "moderated tag". Steem is starting to look a lot like a private-club with a capricious and tyrannical leadership team who can make-up-the-rules to fit whatever fleeting whim happens to suit their current mood.
Some form of "punishment" is all well and good, but there must be clearly stated REASONS for it, and those REASONS must be logically coherent.
AND there MUST be some ROAD TO REDEMPTION for the "offenders".