My beef with downvotes is fairly selfish, basically I will work hard on a post and once in a while get hit by a big whale upvote, but these are almost always met with downvotes. It's hard not to take it personally, especially since I sometimes spend hours on posts. It has on more than one occasion taken the wind out of my sails and affected my motivation to provide good content, especially when I see other people consistently getting hit with rancho and appreciator and the like.

My votes aren't worth much, but because of my dislike of being downvoted I have only used my downvote powers ONCE, when some munchface made a comment on my post about shooting a crow for sport (not ok to say this to The Crow Lady).

In the situation you provided, downvotes to regulate rewards make sense. There's always politics (and corruption) wherever money is involved, and I try to keep out of it and just do my own thing. Still, would be nice if Hive was a little utopia...

Thanks for your post! I read it all, understood most of it.