I get the complication of having a high stake account like likwid downvote stuff "big time". However, the only way to counter this is by searching for other whales that are willing to counter likwid downvotes with upvotes if they agree that this is excessive at the current economic model.
That's why people are talking about taking this stuff to SMTs, if you got an art community and only the art community users hold the SMT (basically) they decide who is rewarded. Depending on the size of the art community a value is then established.
That's the only way this can be handled (without centralized control).
And no, I was not aiming at you with the comment. I was aiming at a lot of people here in the comments that were complaining in general about downvotes.
The problem remains, if you wouldn't see the post value of each post as prominently as it is atm, people wouldn't notice this and the user experience wouldn't suffer.
You can talk about wasting resources all you want. A culture that celebrates success and takes care of their investment would make more sense. I get it though. There's always an asshole. One bad apple will spoil the whole bunch.
After watching and experiencing what happened with the tribes and those tokens, I have very little faith in an SMT used in that same fashion. Complete disaster. I'll assume you've not read any of my posts talking about the content here is basically a product we refuse to sell. Severe shortage of genuine consumers. Most problems go away when there's more people here dedicated to consuming only, provided they have a bit of skin in the game. You mentioned Youtube. Imagine if all those upvotes were worth a penny. Content creators would be doing great, provided people would just mind their own business and let people do what they do honestly. Again though, about Youtube, and these massive downvotes that are unnecessary when the content isn't harming anyone... that's just like being demonitized here. There needs to be a better reason than "I simply don't like your work" or "you're earning too much." Would you tell Stephen King he earns too much because you don't like those stories or would you realize your book store will have an increase in customers and sales due to quality work and that's a good thing?
I'm sorry for ranting. Been a long day.
On the last question, if stephen kings would be funded by my tax money (inflation) instead by the book sales and I didn't enjoy his books (Although I do) I would definitely agree on allowing people to altering this.
And Yes, I also agree on the sentiment. If there were 100k active users here upvoting a post with 10 HP each, single whales would have very little influence and we wouldn't have to worry about likwid at all.
You forgot the factor in the paying consumers. The people who would be attracted to the content we produce and be willing to stake tokens to support it. The content we refuse to sell. Most people seem to forget that part here.