The awkward part about the stake based voting system is that it was married up with social media which was something no one else had ever done at the time. It caused the two to become indelibly linked, and resulted in unnatural behavior, i.e., the ability to prevent a perceived incoming value from rewarding a post.

So you can look at freedom in that way if you choose to but then you're overlooking the social media aspect and what freedom is in that regard. At this point, I wonder if mixing the two was smart at all? I know WeKu has a very similar system, but they only have one condenser. Their system has only the upvote button. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Steem came out with that model.

I think it may have set a better example for the others to follow. I'm not sure how many out there have created similar models so it's difficult to ascertain whether or not it's realistic. One thing is for certain, I wouldn't run around in life, like I'm Caesar and thumbs up or thumbs down stuff. It seems far to simple a way to think and rather bipolar too. Translate the up/down system into an adage from a parallel universe and it would sound a little something like this.

"If you don't have something nice to say, do something mean."

That sort of black and white binary thinking seems destructive at best, and the idea that people might be programmed or encouraged to act in this way; similar to the episode from Orville or Black Mirror's 'Nose Dive', is super disturbing. It wouldn't take long and you could train a whole generation to think this is a completely normal thing to do. People who didn't thumbs up or thumbs down would become heretical weirdos, and like the unscannable persons in idocracy, they'd be feared and loathed.