Of course I would immediately think you are talking about Hive rewards.
Indirecty, yes, because in general I think it is not reasonable for a reward based platform if a few accounts have (so) much more influence on the distribution of the rewards (on the witness positions, on the approval of proposals, ..., ...) than the big majority of the users because it discourages users who don't get the support from (or even get attacked by) these few accounts.
Just as an example, how could a whale, who even cannot play that game, judge a chess post? Chess players can ... so to determine the value of a post, experts would make a much better job than just millionaires. Furthermore, as metioned elsewhere, there could be "sophisticated algorithms" which for example might double check sources etc. and thus suggest an evaluation of a post.
That doesn't change the fact that concerning single posts of course there is no entitlement that pending rewards are always final rewards.
That again doesn't change the fact that I disapprove the behavior to cut pending rewards for reasons like retaliation.
The fact of the matter is, they are not all "bad", and eventually those who downvote from spite, don't have enough HP to bully everyone.
My guess is that people in power are on average not significantly better or worse than the 'average guy'. But as they have more power it is more important to find mechanisms to control their power than to control the power of the average guy, simply because they can cause much more damage IF they act in a bad way.
Must a dictator by definition be worse than you or me? I think not. Is a dictatorship bad, because a single person shouldn't have too much power? I think yes ...
Some use tools for good, some think they use tools for good, and some don't even know what to do with their tools.
Now switch the word "tools" to "knowledge", "money", "power".
I am saying there is no system that can fix this. Any attempts to create one... well we know well what has happened when we've tried creating these "fixed" systems. They end up being quite draconian.
Future will tell us ... at least there are interesting ideas ... read for example here.
i'm half way through so far. Thanks for sharing