Ditto - it's so inconvenient when the dirty truth of reality gets in the way of a utopian fantasy. Biasing author rewards based on the wealth of ones "friends" or "patrons" voting for you when those rewards don't come from those users directly - well that just seems wrong to me. It just becomes a wealth circle-jerk instead of a reputation and popularity circle-jerk. I'd take the later any day since the wealthy could still promote posts directly with their own money. If you want to throw your weight around to influence the rewards pool allocation negatively or positively - well that just seems like coercion to me (not even lobbying since they don't spend any more to do it).