Despite the passage of time this remains an underappreciated post, and it is proved correct by the flags flown on it.
Consider the upvotes I cast on it, and the impact of flags on my curation rewards. GTG has zeroed out every comment Khrom has made, as well as the OP, and I have upvoted all of those, as well as everyone elses comments on the OP. For all the comments GTG did not zero out with flags, I will receive a curation reward as a result of my upvotes on comments. But I will not receive any curation reward for my upvotes on the OP, nor on comments GTG has zeroed out, because there is nothing to share from a comment or post that extracts zero inflation from the rewards pool.
GTG does not just eliminate author rewards Khrom would receive from the OP and his subsidiary comments. GTG has eliminated my curation rewards for upvoting Khrom's OP and comments.
It is plainly obvious by this mechanism that whoever originally has the preponderance of stake can maintain that majority by the use of downvotes to suppress the flow of inflation from the rewards pool to anyone downvoted. Then the entire flow of inflation out of the rewards pool only inures to those not downvoted. 100% of the inflation from the rewards pool will flow out of the pool. When DV's are applied to selected accounts - and this is why GTG, HW, Marky, and etc., all flag every comment and post on an account. They are not acting to incentivize good behaviour. That would require only one DV on the offending content. Because they are actually acting to maintain centralized power of an oligarchy on Hive they choose accounts and then completely cut those accounts off from inflation issued by the rewards pool by zeroing out every post and comment.
From the perspective of maintaining the weight of stake of majority stakeholders, this is the strategy that enables that majority to be maintained, selectively excluding accounts from receiving inflation from the pool and decreasing the number of accounts acting to receive inflation from the pool. They reduce the competition for that inflation by this means, and then the inflation issuing from the rewards pool can only flow to the rest of the accounts on Hive, and by mutually upvoting with socks they direct that flow to themselves.
Antisocialist says in comment below:
"...These dominant viewpoints can't change until the political power in the hive spreads out some more. That only happens if people power up moar hive."
That is simply impossible, mathematically. The oligarchy would have to sell that Hive for it to be available OTM. They clearly observe stake accumulation and ensure that it cannot grow through receipt of inflation from the rewards pool by selectively excluding 'enemy' accounts from receiving any by zeroing out their posts and comments.
As long as DV's can simply zero out all posts and comments made by an account at will, the extant oligarchy can maintain the majority of stake, and control the code by controlling the consensus witnesses at all times. It is mathematically impossible to power up Hive and overcome the advantage of stake weight when DV's enable zeroing out every post and comment.
The claim that Hive is decentralized is false. The claim that Hive resists censorship is false. The claim that Hive is Web3 is false. Hive larps as Web3, but the DV mechanism enables the financial rewards to be directed to the extant majority stakeholders, and that maintains centralized control of platform governance.
Thanks!