I've seen a couple of posts on the user authority system in the past few days and i can see where you are coming from. For people coming into steemit when they see a high reputation they would expect a certain level of account operations. Having looked at the top 20 rank steemit accounts under the old system that is obviously not the case. No 1 being a prime example.
As you said a persons reputation is by nature how they are percieved by the world around them. A person with a good reputation would normally have earned it through their good acts on a daily basis. Just like on here where you can write, vote, comment ect... And doing this to a high standard should directly relate to how you are perceived by other users. By definition, your reputation.
And as we all know that is not the case. Being able to increase your rep through underhanded methods and buying of large votes for me goes entirely against this. I know that if you are buying votes it will obviously affect your rep but that shouldn't be the case. If the user authority system can set a better parameter range for reputation then i am all for it. A system that ranks people based on their actions here makes far more sense and as the point here is transparency it would be nice if our reputations were and accurate reflection of that.
I've checked out where I sit at the moment on https://steem-ua.com/
"Welcome niallon11!
Your ua score is 2.435 and you have an ua rank of 16653"
Not too bad but give me until xmas and i will break the top 10k
I agree with what you wrote.