When one has worked very hard on nine posts in a row, without earning rewards worthy of their efforts, they can begin to lose their motivation.
Then when the tenth one they have posted finally receives rewards they are over the moon and their inspiration restored.
Then... A whale comes along and downvotes that post thinking it is undeserving, and the inspiration is gone. Now the person begins to produce inadequate content because they no longer want to make the effort to post their best work knowing that when it finally gets rewarded, it can still be taken away.
This is why we have seen a decline in quality on Steemit, and why the "flagging for disagreement on rewards" is directly responsible.
Absolutely. It has affected me even before I got hit with flags for being overrewarded. It's part of psychology and comparative assessment of work others do, like in a job. If you fellow workers get paid the same for doing less work, this promotes the "unionized" type of socialist communist working towards the lowest common denominator. Quality of work matters to motivate people to get rewarded. Then people want to argue that quality is subjective and blah blah. They don't understand how it works in the real world. Thank you for the great feedback!
Thank you ever so much for the kind gesture.
See this: Why Flagging Is Bringing Down The Value of Steem, As A Currency for why downvoting for rewards and flagging are an issue overall.
See my explanation of the problem and solution: SCD #7 - Working Towards a Decentralized Self-Governance of the Steemit Community