Great post brother about some very important topics. I don't feel flagging is warranted unless it's an extreme case of verbal abuse or where physical harm is taking place. I've seen it's misuse on a few occasions to carry out it seemed personal vendettas against another poster. It's a bad look for the platform and I feel needs to be addressed going forward. I was very close to flagging a user a couple months ago but refrained from doing so b/c I I would have been acting out of personal feeling. My wife had finally joined Steemit and was starting to get involved with the community. She posted a picture of our daughters in the pool and another user accused her of exploiting our kids for the "almighty dollar" as they put it. Pissed me off something fierce & I was also very hurt. Needless to say, my wife removed all the pictures of her and the kids and is now pretty much nonexistent on here. What that user did was way out of line, but still not worthy of a flag in my opinion.

As for Steemit being a zero sum game in reference to rewards, I am in complete agreement with you. Users have earned their influence and are free to use it anyway they see fit. The SJW posts about calling out self upvoting and the like I think are rubbish. It's simply them trying to suppress other users freedom and tell them what they can and can't do with their money. I feel there's no place for that here, we deal with this mentality enough in our daily life dealing with politicians and government, the last place we need that communist mentality is here. Really good Daily Dose man. Re-Steemed