No, it's not good. Neither however is the network filling up with self-voting spam to the extent that you can't find good content any more, and people leave. I believe that's what would happen if down-voting was removed. This problem isn't new, and there have been 19 hardforks to Steem. Any of those could have removed down-voting if the witnesses considered it beneficial.
Also, whales such as Dan and others do sometimes impose big down-votes on accounts which are seeking to damage Steem by hosting pirated video on related services for example. If the community doesn't have the ability to down-vote illegal/immoral content, 'the authorities' would likely impose more draconian censorship by shutting down Steemit.
Good points. But again couldn't anyone posting pirate material be flagged having the same effect? The guy who flagged and downvoted the comments here has a massive minus rating so obviously he revels in causing mischief. However he's successfully censoring innocent and harmless comment. Also... I've not come across selfvoting spam? Everyone I see self votes to give their posts a kick start. This is a necessity?
This post has suffered collateral damage from a 'whale war' between Dan and Berniesanders (who is another whale with many accounts). I believe his main account has a negative rep primarily because of Dan down-voting him. I don't know what their dispute is about.
Voting for your posts seems reasonable for most people (I've recently stopped though), but self-voting comments is considered by many to be voting abuse. There are factions who would like self-voting banned, but this would have unforeseen consequences too. I also have the account @steemreports and develop http://www.steemreports.com, which analyses many of these things.
Thanks Andy. I'll look into those accounts your have...you might be interested in Jerrybanfields post on Steemits top earners.