All of this would make perfect sense to me if the rewards they are receiving have actually been handed to them by somebody. Then why would you care if someone earns more money than you? It's just good for them!

However, on STEEM, we all pay for people's pay out. I pay an author even when I don't upvote them, but because I choose to buy more STEEM to power it up instead of selling. I, and any long-term investor (big or small), should then care about the overall value of the platform. And the inflation of the token that is used to pay content creators is our way to fund its progress. It is how we attract great creators and incentivise work that builds STEEM.

So no I disagree with the idea that by flagging you are taking away something that a steemian has earned. Instead, you are responsibly taking part as a stakeholder in how the scare resources the platform has is used.

I view it like an investor in a newspaper company who, because of his or her stake, has a board member steat. If they observe from their statistics that one contributing journalist is a poor investment as the value they produce is less than their wage + the alternative cost of not having another author in the paper, they can use their power to change that. Similarly, but instead of the binary power of "either you have a seat at the board or you don't", STEEM is beautiful in that all stakeholders has this type of seat according to their stake. And where instead of decisions influencing writers being hidden from their eyes behind closed doors, any content creator can observe who is having an issue with their payout, and make contact with them.

I really like that aspect of it, and think it would be a loss for STEEM if it was taken away and "reserved for cases of abuse and fraud by bad actors".