The 4-5% isn't deducted from the reward pool. That's 4-5% being spread around the 100% indiscriminately and equally based on percentage. It's spread around, like I said, and reaches an equilibrium.
It isn't possible to show exactly how much each whale benefits
If that's the case, why act so confident? If you want to convince me this is a problem, I'll need proof. Surely you'd have evidence before making a claim so show me at least ONE account benefitting from what you see is a problem.
I didn't say it was or say anything that sounds like I said it was, so I'm a bit confused as to where you are coming from here.
That's exactly what I said in the comment you are replying to here, but in different words.
I suggest rethinking the maths involved, I've already made clear that ALL accounts benefit from the downvoting - that is by design - but the 'benefit' of downvoting is stake weighted, meaning that the biggest accounts have the most to gain in terms of pure 'revenue' increases.
Biggest accounts stand to gain the same percentage as the small accounts. And yes. It's common sense, if one owns more stake, they stand a chance to earn more, and lose more.
So what's the problem?
The gains from downvoting are small compared the perceived risk of downvoting someone and starting a flag war with someone who can do you more harm than you can do to them. Therefore, the vast majority of downvotes with any value at all come from a few whales with high enough stake and reputation that they feel untouchable in their downvoting. This, combined with the actual amounts gained by downvoting being significant for whales means that it becomes financially worth their time and any 'risk' to go around with downvote quotas, aiming to downvote as much as possible.
Once you have enough stake, you can possibly make enough money from the downvoting to cover the time cost required to do the downvoting. This has the combined effect of netting payouts, plus allowing you to remove those ideologically opposed to you - who might reduce your ability to spread ideas that the others disprove - thus protecting your own content rewards too. Finally, all of this accumulates to more reputation and more power.
And then?
Then you can consider the answer to my question if you like, appreciate that I took the time to respond to you despite me muting you for previous trolling and consider if you want to reply in a productive way.
Why are you accusing me of trolling?
Aside from the previous threads where you were derailing things (which you explained was because you were angry at me from months ago), the last comment that I saw from you on the rockdust thread simply said 'you sit on your computer' - after I put a fair bit of time into replying to you, so I muted you. I have now re-read the comment and it has been edited, with more text added. I scanned through the link you provided and there is a ton to say about the subject, but I don't have time at the moment. It is a complicated scientific topic of enquiry and it has been a while since I looked at the evidence, I just know that my own experiments, the examples provided by numerous trusted people and various published scientific sources on the food soil web have confirmed for me personally that rockdust is an essential addition for soil health. I didn't see much in the way of studies linked in the page you provided, but I did see refutation of claims about Rockdust that I have never even seen made by anyone and also lots of books for sale by the author of the page.
Considering I am not selling rockdust and have no connection to anyone that is, it can't be said realistically that I am selling anything, least of all snake oil. I will try to find time to get back to that comment at some point.
FYI, In general I deal with evidence as much as possible because I don't want to waste my time going down dead ends or writing posts that get trashed due to a lack of evidence. If people challenge me then I will look for evidence or explain how we might acquire the evidence that is missing - it's just a scientific/logical approach. When people don't meet me on that level and throw around accusations I get turned off from the conversation quickly.