What we can conclude from this is that “objectively bad” behavior is any behavior that can be automated using unsophisticated software and which yields the individual oversized profits.
By this criterion, witnesses are objectively bad. They make ~1.5k Steem per day doing nothing but running a piece of software. Everything extra they may do as witnesses ends up receiving a lot of extra money in the form of upvotes when they post about it. It's therefore untrue that 1.5k include additional work done for the community, and a good half of witnesses don't do anything extra and don't even bother giving status updates to @clains. Upvoting is the one and only true mechanism to incentivize community work, and it works great. The large witness payout is entirely unjustified and could be reduced manyfold without losing any witness or risking a degradation of server quality. A good dedicated server costs $100 per month. 1500 Steems per day amount to $67500 per month at today's rate. This is the kind of money a quant trader makes per month on Wallstreet, and they work 10h+ per day from morning-preopen at 7~8am writing bots and making advanced statistical models, and risking their career when there is a fuck-up. This is also 6x the monthly salary of an average experienced developer in the US. Yes, you read well: a single witness is paid as much as 6 experienced US developers or 10 junior developers or 20~40 developers in developping markets, and he isn't even working for that: just running a software provided by Steemit, checking hardfork announcements, and upgrading when there is a hardfork.
Witnesses are the most parasitic and objectively bad (following this post's usefulness based definition) actors in the whole system. This is the most ludicrously overpaid and low requirement position I have ever seen in any organization in my entire life. Yet nothing is done about it. The only proposal to allow witnesses to volunteer to reduce their pay was pushed back in a "meeting" (that probably involved some obviously self-interested witnesses as well).
Given the ridiculous and totally unjustified payout, it is ludicrous to support downvoting posts that make too much money. The best paid blogger doesn't even get as much as any witness, in spite of the fact that blogging is actual work where as being a witness is an almost entirely passive job that consists essentially in running a piece of software and upgrading steemd when there is a hardfork (everyone else also upgrades steemd anyway).
Both the witness payout and up/down voting need to be fixed. I've written a fix proposal for the up/down voting here:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@rampant/how-to-fix-downvoting-a-set-of-proposals-for-a-solution
I hadn't even considered that really.
I don't find it ridiculous at all. Curation is about finding the right price for a post. Some people might think a post is undervalued (so they upvote) and other might find it overvalued (so they reduce the payout by counteracting the upvotes, as @dan proposes). And this has nothing to do with jealousy or any other emotions, it's just a process of properly allocating our limited funds.
I agree with you that witnesses are probably overpaid. It's certainly not true that they just "do nothing but run a piece of software", but still these payments seem to be excessive at this stage. What I fail to understand is this logic: if we have a problem in area A, then should allow a similar problem to exist in area B. I'd think we should just fix the problem both in area A and B.
What's ludicrous is not the concept of downvoting a post that gets "too much" but the fact that @dan is calling it "objectively bad" to receive more blogging payout than deserved when at the same time he caved in on his one and only feeble attempt at reducing ridiculously overprices witness salaries. The argument in the git ticket is laughable: the ticket was closed because there was a push back from witnesses (of course!) and it was decided that allowing witnesses to voluntarily reduce their salary was going to create competition and push the salaries downward which would reduce "quality" of witnesses (like if there was any need of "quality" to run a binary on a $100/month dedicated server and upgrade it once in a while..). Witness salaries are as bad for the system as the totally broken liquidity reward once was. This needs to be changed, and asking witnesses' opinion is a bad idea because obviously they will not approve something that affects their bottom line. All witnesses made it to their position because @dan, @dantheman, @ned and @steemit voted them in. If they are not happy with a salary cut away from their 60k+ per month wallstreet-like salaries, it would just take a change of vote by @dan and co. for them to be replaced by anyone among the hundreds of quality people waiting in line for a witness position. The only reason nothing is being done is because many of current witnesses are old Bitshares VIPs who have a direct connection to Dan and feel entitled to receive a special treatment, and apparently Dan doesn't have the heart to remove them that. It's so much easier to downvote bloggers who get "too much" rather than reallocate some of that witness orgy to give more to the content producers.
The funds for witnesses are separate from funds for posts & curation. So even if we reduced rewards for witnesses those funds could not be easily allocated elsewhere. We have two problems and both of them need to be fixed. Let's fix curation first (as it affects lots of users) and then turn attention to witnesses.
I agree with a lot what you say about witnesses. But consider this: the purpose was to create a situation where these guys have a lot to lose when they misbehave. If their salaries where closely related to their costs, it would be easy to bribe them.
We are doing hardforks every week. It doesn't take much coding to change the hardcoded proportion of relative witness payout and content creation incentive fund. And even without reallocating explicitely the funds, the simple fact of reducing witness salary will reduce Steem Power inflation and give everyone else proportionally more stake in the system
Looking at how much skin in the game a witness has can be a criterion for voters to consider, but that doesn't mean witnesses need to be showered with cash just to make sure they have skin in the game. The mere fact someone can get enough clout to become a witness implies in a large majority of cases that she is either a whale, an Bitshares VIP, or a popular content creators who will have already accrued quite a bit of skin in the game. Beside many witnesses are powering down from an already huge stash of SP so that pretty much everything they earn as witness is just liquidated right away.
Witnesses are right now literally controlled by Steemit. They will obey slavishly to anything Steemit ask them to do because if they don't and they lose the support of Steemit, there goes their beautiful witness position and its generous pay.