There's been a lot of talk about the "fairness" of blogging rewards. Some Steemianerites post content that require tons of research and the brains of a rocket scientist to draft up. Yet they receive just a few bucks while others post real simple things and make thousands of Steem Dollars. Y'all know the story... If only the labour theory of value was valid! :(
One of the solutions proposed was to downvote (flag) those posts. This caused another discussion on the ethics behind downvoting. Here's my take on it although I'm sure it has been said before.
Shareholders you are!
If you have an account on Steemit, you OWN some STEEM. That's a fact. You require a balance of STEEM to be able to interact with the Steem blockchain. You need some to register, vote, post and comment.
The STEEM you see in your wallet is your property. It doesn't belong to Steemit inc. It's not a loan or an entry in their database that allows you a certain privilege granted by them. It's straight up yours. 100%!
Having shares in a company often means you have a say in decision making - that includes budget allocation.
If I own shares of a company, it is in my best interest to ensure the company does well. That means please it's customers as efficiently as possible and of course not waste money! In the case of Steem/Steemit, we want the community to produce good content, get to read good content, and feel like everything is insert values here (fair seems to be the popular one).
Here's where it gets real simple
As a shareholder of the Steem blockchain, do what you think is best for the "company". If that means downvoting stuff simply because there's a typo in the post and you are anal about that stuff, so be it! If you think the platform will be better off by voting for or against a post with typos, cast your vote.
Every time you log in to Steemit, you are walking into a board meeting where the topic of the day is: Daily Budget Allocation. "Should we allocate capital to X or Y or Z? And how much?"
I vote tits! All in favor?
Downvoting = Feedback = Value
It is a mistake to think that just because there are no curation rewards going to downvoters' wallets that it is pointless to do. Downvoting - even if it's just because the post falls into the category of your pet peeve - sends the message: "I, as a user/reader, don't like to see this content". Some traditional companies go out of their way to get that type of user feedback through surveys and questionnaires. Steemit/Steem has this baked in - USE IT!
This doesn't just give feedback to steemit inc. mind you, most importantly it gives feedback to both content creators and curators.
Right now the message to bloggers is: "Go ahead, post about travel and boobs, it's the only thing that can get you paid"
The message to voters is: "Find new posts about travel and boobs and upvote that shit before anyone else. Tcha-tching son"
When potential bloggers see that travel posts have just a few $ behind them (whether due to downvoting or not), it removes the abnormally large incentive to post about that topic. The subject (in this example travel) will become just another topic with regular-ass incentives and downvoting won't be required as much in the long run.
Conclusion
Don't overthink the ethics of downvoting. You are a shareholder in the Steem blockchain. You have just as much of a right to decide to whom the daily budget allocation should go as any other shareholder. Every time you log in to Steemit, you are part of the decision making process. Downvoting provides value to everyone involved - even readers that have no shares. Downvoting fixes long term problems by removing incentive imbalances. Go ahead, influence the world whichever way you want.
TL;DR
Do what you want with your property.
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