Larger accounts having a bigger say in the way rewards are distributed is an unavoidable consequence of stake based consensus. As much of a disadvantage as this may seem, it's one of the few sybil resistant ways that things can work in a decentralized fashion.
The idea is to get stake based voting to approximate general consensus over content appeal. This can only happen if stakers are motivated to vote in a way that consistent with their honest estimation of the general appeal of content.
Currently stakers are not motivated to do this because curation rewards are too low so they just end up selling votes or voting themselves causing the broad system failure. We have to change the economics including curation to entice them.
The phenomenon of having established popular authors gaining higher rewards is something every social media platform sees. To some degree, it's not a bad thing as people building a good reputation based on skill and talent will see increasing rewards over time. Higher curation itself doesn't solidify established authors, as there's a zero sum game between curators to vote early (but not too early) to take more curation rewards from later voters, but not to over vote due to the threat of downvotes.
Downvotes suck yes, but they're necessary to turn this place around. I'm not advocating for a separate pool the same size as the upvote pool, but just a fraction of that size so that we all have a stick to keep the other stakers honest that doesn't cost us money to swat them with.
This is false. It is entirely dependent on incentives as to how that distribution is effected. Currently, and under your proposal, financial incentive will promote extraction of rewards for ROI.
Substituting gaming curation rewards over selling votes does not fix corrupting curation at all. It just changes how that corruption can be gamed. The change of economics necessary to fix the problem is to eliminate incentive to game curation altogether. Nothing else will prevent @therealwolf from maximizing his financial returns from corrupting curation.
A critical part of that equation is financially encouraging development of Steem via SPS dividends to promote capital gains by improving the investment vehicle, and together both mechanisms I propose do that.
Downvotes are broken presently, and adding financial incentive to Bernie's efforts to censor will not fix the problems. Look at my last 100 comments for necessary background requisite to consider how to fix downvotes. I'm fine with how they are now, if the only alternative is making it actually profitable for Bernie to flag.
I flag trash. You have received a flag.