Upvoted for discussion, but I don't like this approach at all. Some of the solutions mentioned in the comments are worse than the problem. Let's step back and look at the big picture. Dan was fully conscious when he based Steem on Money = Power. That made it possible to avoid a Sybil attack in an uncensored, decentralized, pseudonymous publishing platform. Demanding that it also avoids spam and corruption is perfectionism. This is the worst system, except all others that have been tried.
I have faith that such a community will be far more competitive in a market competition for mindshare than one that elects vote buyers.
Why wouldn't that competition for mindshare work within Steem? Especially when we get moderated communities. What most people are worrying about isn't mindshare, but a share of the loot. We're disappointed that being moderately greedy isn't as profitable as we expected, compared to being shamelessly greedy.
You don't need look at the Trending page. You don't need to worry whether a particular user deserves his profits. If censorship by whales becomes a serious problem, we can avoid it in a client.
Maybe Dan is still butthurt because Ned downvoted his post about Eos. But that stupid action only drew more attention to it.
Not at all. What it meant was that a Sybil attack was potentiated through buying the original miners of Steem out--a golden parachute. It's hard to conceive of a more trivially easy centralizing mechanism than money, which SP weighting votes is.
Everyone is fully conscious. Just because you do something consciously, doesn't mean it's completely without issues that you can recognize later on :/ I don't look at the Trending page. That's only a symptom. Ask @skeptic how flagging is a form of censorship, because I've experienced it too.