I've seen this idea floated around before and it's an interesting approach, but I also think the reputation system may not be robust enough (as currently implemented) to take on this responsibility. It also further increases the barrier of entry to new accounts which start with such a low reputation. There's also the concern of some bad actors having higher reputations then they should or the concern about sybil attacks. If building a reputation can be done (even by bad actors, even if it takes them some time) that might be easier than dropping, say, $500,000 to power up as a whale.

I wonder if we could have something like a rating and review system. With that, people could rate interactions they've had with others (1 to 5 stars, etc). Having a human-powered system which could then give people (and the steemit interface) the opportunity to adjust accordingly would be nice. It could, as an example, hide reviews by default of people who have a certain threshold of bad reviews themselves (similar to how a low rep can't impact a high rep). It could also show posts by default for people with good reviews who have been flagged by those with low reviews.

As for that impacting payouts? Not sure that would be a good idea though. I dealt with many months of being flagged right before payout. It was certainly annoying, but I built enough of a following that I was still able to enjoy nice rewards. I had an opportunity to chat with the individual and they told me they would stop their flagging campaign. I haven't seen a flag from then since then.

It's still definitely a problem and I'm not really sure what the best long term solution is that doesn't create other bad consequences.

I'm glad we're talking about it though. :)