Who are the central forces that get to decide that a post is worth too much? What exactly is too much? I can understand this in cases of obvious abuse like the example you gave of the bogus commenting, but I have seen a lot more posts where people are targeted for no reason. I have had that happen myself, where some dick face came along and decided 11 people voting for my post shouldn’t equate to the $100 or so it had, claimed there was something bogus, but there wasn’t.
Votes shouldn’t be tied to money in this way, then. If 10 people come along and decide to give me their votes, how then, can the value of those votes be degraded by the actions of singular person or account because they arbitrarily say so?
This is exactly how the system is designed though. The consensus on how much a post is worth is based on the sum of all the upvotes and downvotes at the end of 7 days. It is very similar to how ratings work on most other content platforms too. If a movie gets four people who give it five stars, and one who gives it one star - the movie will show a 4 star review. I don't think there is anyone who would say that the movie deserved five starts because of the four people who said it did. Most people would agree that based on the votes it had received, it's current rating is at 4 stars.
I agree, which is why I think the dollar amount should be hidden, similar to Medium. Upvoted posts rise to the top, people can still vote up or down. The issue is the disproportionate impact one single downvote has.
https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153
Showing the dollar amounts is one of the main things that makes the platform interesting to visitors. They are not going to remove them.