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New and casual users don't understand that, they just want to be able to participate in commenting and voting. If you take the voting away it drastically changes how the public and outsiders will see steemit and in my opinion when people see the image of more power being given to the elite and wealthy it negatively impacts that perception.

Edit: also your comment reminded me a bit of this

But that's pretty much exactly what steemit does. You pay for influence. I do agree on your point that this is not very inviting to new users though.

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