I got as far as the 2nd paragraph, then realized I had to clarify something before reading the rest and commenting further:
"The real goal is to eliminate "punishment" because no one likes to be singled out for punishment. Punishment also "divides" us and many people perceive it as an act of violence against one individual."
Is it the case that any solutions in regard to the upvote/downvote/flag conundrum have to be in accordance to this anarcho-Capitalist ideology? If so I then I believe it is very likely insoluble. Is Steemit to be run along these very niche ideological lines? I'm asking because if we want Steemit to go mainstream then you have a very serious problem. If so, how broad is your concept of "punishment"?. Does it cover things such as returning ill gotten gains from gaming the system and such like? If so then to all those who say "Tax is theft" are you OK with "Theft is Tax" because those that thieve are a tax on others.
Steemit is a decentralized system of governance with an aim toward censorship resistance. This means developing systems that self-correct, self-heal, and do not depend upon any kind of hierarchy. It is bound to be messy, but so is the free market.
I think that those who are against down votes don't like the feeling of punishment that comes with them. Whether something is theft or not depends upon the consensus of property rights.
That's the long tedious process of anarchistic living :). When people understand more, and share more of a common basis for reality, that difficulty gets reduced more and more... but it takes people to learn in order to understand how to operate and live this way.
Can the community create trusted agents to evaluate unfair flags and remove them? This would need to be mirrored in the backend code to allow such a possibility. Maybe some method to choose trusted people like escrow would use perhaps.
I have considered ideas about using approval voting weight (like witnesses) to pick people who have the "power to flag". It gets very tricky to scale and to hold people accountable, especially with incumbents.
Another method that has been adopted is random "meta moderation" similar to how slashdot.org does it.
Random jury pooling.
I'm absolutely fine with your first paragraph, it's just that we have identified a number of issues with the current implementation, this is indisputable I would say. The argument appears to be that things will level out over time. I believe we do not have that time because it appears to be the same argument used to defend current Capitalist society; that the 1% will benefit the 99% by the "trickle down effect". This has been clearly shown to not be the case as wealth is concentrated more and more to the top 1%. I believe this effect is currently being played out, and that this will lose our user base before any theoretical trickling occurs - this is my concern.
"I think that those who are against down votes don't like the feeling of punishment that comes with them. Whether something is theft or not depends upon the consensus of property rights."
I'm against down votes because it doesn't appear to work on top of this reason. The consensus of property rights could be provided by the consensus of the community in the Court/delayed payment model I sketched out, or something different, but the main point is that the larger community confers these rights.
i love the idea of privatizing and commoditizing thoughts as property rights..I wrote a thesis on it many decades ago and here it is..hats off to all concerned
Especially 'subjective'or discretionary punishment w/o explanation.