I have argued this fact as well about it being in the blockchain.   I am fairly technical and can determine how to get at it if I want.    Likewise, if the government deems certain things are banned and locks them in a vault.   They technically still exist it is just difficult to get to them.

So in effect the crushing hammer blow of a down vote can be very similar to shoving something in a vault.   Many people will be unable to view it.   Perhaps someone will make a reversesteemit.com or something where the trending page and popularity is 100% the opposite.   You'd have to wade through a ton of spam but you might see these posts that were splattered.   The problem is this shouldn't be being done for opinion.

But that isn't how the downvotes are being used. Authors are being down voted because some people think their content didn't deserve that big of a reward. It's not like there are posts of people saying "I want a car, upvote me" and them getting huge $20,000 payouts. I haven't seen an example like that, have you?

But even in that case, it's not like you are a hero for blocking other people from receiving rewards. It's more you can use that as an example of an excessive payment to someone who doesn't really need it, but at the same time in other instances the person really could need it, and the same downvote should make you a villain like it would make you a hero right?

And if we are going to downvote based on who we think doesn't need any more money, well then what is the total amount in payouts that each author should be allowed to get before we collectively determine it's justified to start blocking them from getting any more money?

Agreed @stellabella, I came across a someone commenting on a couple of posts this morning. The person wasn't spamming but his/her opinion that was being expressed was not in what would be considered to be conventional thinking. I didn't agree with most of what was said but did notice that some people had been flagging the person's posts. I looked further and found that the person had been flagged to the point he/she left the platform. 

If that sort of bullying off the platform can take place using the post flag, I shudder to think what people like that would do with downvotes. Some may use downvotes reasonably but I suspect that would not be the majority. 

Better to either respectfully express disagreement or move on than to allow anyone the power to downvote with  impunity. The misuse of the post flags are bad enough. IMO