Having said several times I do not understand the down vote and a reason for it, I finally believe I have determined WHY I am having trouble grasping this and other people are not.
In that post I expressed that I truly could not see a positive value add for a down vote. I was not referring to a flag to remove plagiarism, spam, and abusive posts. I was referring to a down vote for any reason other than those.
I think I have answered my own question
It is a matter of perceptions and how people view steemit. There are a number of perceptions. Here are some that I believe exist.
- It is similar to reddit and other social media. They vote that way, so should we.
- It is similar to a boardroom of a company, or a political popularity contest
- It is a free market for ideas and content we produce
My difficulty in understanding the down vote is that I view steemit as being a free market. I will explain how this causes a conflict with the idea of a down vote.
Free Market Perspective
In a free market people purchase your products (services or goods) due to a desire for the product and if you have competitors and people still purchase from you it is simply because you are offering something that was more important to them personally.
So when bringing a new product to market, people will often do a market analysis. It is important to know if there is a market so you can determine pricing, can determine if there is even enough interest to pursue the creation of the product or not.
This also does not have to be purely financial. I can consider what is motivation for me. It could be the payment, it could be the chance to talk with other people and share my ideas, or it could be a combination of both.
In my market analysis I may determine that X number of people are interested in my product. If X is sufficient for whatever reasons I may have to bring the product to market I do so. Whether Y people do not like my product is irrelevant as all I am really interested in is how many consumers for my product there are.
A down vote on steemit violates this market concept (at least the way it currently exists). A person has worked on accumulating steem power and now their vote is worth let's say $10. They vote on my product because they like it. On steemit someone else that does not like my product can come and down vote it to a much lower value. This is a VERY bad thing in a market themed perception.
It is like 10 people buying my product for $10 and someone coming along and saying "your product sucks" and knocking $9 off of the price of MY product before it gets to the register. So now 10 people who thought it was worth the price they were willing to pay get the product for $1. This makes any market analysis I did earlier totally invalidated NOT due to market demand, but simply because the power of this down vote introduces something completely alien to the market.
So what about the boardroom, stake holder perspective?
Boardroom, Stakeholder perspective
Your steem power is a form of representation of VESTS in the steem blockchain. It does make you a stake holder.
As such it could be possible to view every piece of content on steemit (or the blockchain) as being something that needs board approval to receive much or any recognition.
In such a case a yes, or no vote is the norm. A negative vote does have meaning in such an environment.
Technically, we are all stake holders and you could argue this is the case. How many people have spent much time in boardrooms?
Are we electing representatives or presidents here?
This perspective totally does make a negative vote work. Yet, I was totally not viewing steemit as a boardroom. Thus, when looking at it from a market perspective the negative vote and the consequences from it appear very much like theft and absolutely not a free market.
Like other places
Reddit has down votes and up votes (though down vote is eliminated from some channels). It also has a separate REPORT POST mechanism for abuse, spam, plagiarism.
Yet predominantly the negative vote does exist most places. It often results in massive censorship on certain channels (reddits) and people have to seek out sub-reddits if they wish to be able to speak. This means you pretty much have difficulty having any civil discourse with people that disagree with you. Yes, it does happen but for the most part it is very much like wading into trench warfare.
Do we truly want steemit to emulate that? Do we need to? Why did some sub-reddits deem it worth removing the down vote?
Conclusion
I will not tell any of you that you are right or wrong on this. I am an Anarcho-Capitalist and I have strong beliefs in the ideas of a free market. This is truly how I view steemit. A free market for ideas. Such an environment has no reason for a down vote, it doesn't really matter in terms of a market.
Yet I do know there are many people that disagree and they deem steem/steemit as something different.
I knew 
I may have been wrong. Perhaps we need to define what we wish to market it as so that when we are convincing people to come here they are not coming here with the wrong perceptions.
I do not see this problem going away as long as the down vote has such visible repercussions to payout and to reputation. It doesn't really do either of those things on reddit, yet people still react with anger to down votes.
I could change my mind, if steemit is not destined to be a free market for content and ideas then I could see rationalization for a down vote, yet that means I'll need to rethink what I was thinking the purpose was.