I'm not telling you an opinion. I am telling you how it is designed.
I get that some of the downvotes are mean spirited, I get that some of them are dumb. I get that they make some sad and mad.
I don't think you get how Steem works.
You can make a pretty picture about how you wish it works, but there are some pieces you just aren't understanding.
I know perfectly how Steem works. You really think its text storage is all that valuable? No one cares, for some, its an inconvenience.
Its the PoB system that makes it interesting. Still, Steemit Inc. in a rather recent post commented that it is unfair for a PoB system to be universal for all topics and communities. PoB how it works today does not work well at all.
PoB has potential, but its designed wrong right now. Free downvotes also tilts the atmosphere to a negative energy rather than a positive energy.
Also, I have explained to you why your argument for downvotes makes no sense. Your idea is the same idea made by neighborhood associations that try to control people and not let them do what they want with their own property. Its socialism essentially, wherein you never truly own your own property because others get to tell you what you must do with it.
The same principles are applied to downvotes. The only reason you want downvotes is to be able to hurt someone that does with their own STEEM what you dislike. But they really can't hurt the network, because they can only do as much harm to the network as they add to the network market cap.
Allow me to explain in more detail. Imagine someone buys 1 million STEEM and powers it up. All this person wants to do is upvote their own posts. Are they hurting the network? Nope, in fact, they are a net positive.
This person locked up a lot of STEEM, increasing the value of STEEM by reducing its circulating supply. This person cannot be hurting the network because they can only take the percentage of the reward pool equal to the value they add by staking. Every STEEM staked (powered up) increases the value of the circulating supply, which is why the staked STEEM receives inflation as a reward.
Now, you argue that they do hurt it by not upvoting high quality content. But they have no obligation to do that, and they are not really hurting the network by upvoting whatever they prefer to upvote because they are actually already a net positive by staking.
This idea that they MUST upvote content based on merit is a coercive, tyrannical position that is completely in opposition to the liberty and right of free action promised by decentralized systems.
So again, what is the downvote for? It is so that you have the power to force others to do what you want. Because every staked individual is a net positive, the downvote button is not essential. It does not matter how many times people try to repeat that it is essential, as a matter of fact, it is not.
This topic really seem to "touch you" @blake.letras :)