VP "costs" money

It doesn't cost money to downvote, it costs VP. I didn't say that VP costs money. And until HF21, it will cost VP that could otherwise be used to upvote yourself.

designed to counter spam

What are downvotes intended to prevent if not spam and plagiarism?

probably a sock puppet

No, I'm a seperate human than Hive account@berniesanders. I don't always agree with them and IMO the downvotes mentioned in the root posts weren't completely justified. I have a personal website (shameless promo), and a lot of good posts (I think so at least), if I am a sock puppet then Hive account@berniesanders must be really dedicated.

He just printed it from thin air

Well he did need to pay for mining machines, and compete with Steemit and other miners. And whether the VP was paid for is irrelevant: there is still the cost of not self-voting.

Be careful who "kindly" "helps" you in your comments

That's good advice.

[screenshot]

That just means he mined his account, as opposed to paying the account creation fee. Having a mined account doesn't mean you did any mining after the account creation, although Hive account@berniesanders did.

(expect a response to the other comment soon)