Steem's done a lot of cool stuff with the downvoting/flagging concept honestly, and I don't think it gets enough credit for it. You see basic downvoting get abused on Steam (the game store) and Reddit and it's a really big problem from the former.

I can see the skepticism about people really putting in money to downvote brigade something. But for the average trolls and jerks, downvoting something won't be worth it.

Fair warning - a bit of thinking out loud below
TL;DR: What steem has is pretty solid, but there's a ton of possibilities to make it better. Maybe even things that the decentralized nature of steem might make more possible.

If someone or even steem themselves looked in to some improvements on the whole downvoting system i think they could make it even better then they already have.

Like what if we could tell how trustworthy or valuable your downvote was based on if people think you're spamming the downvote button incorrectly. Maybe combine it with a system where we can say why you're downvoting a post (Maybe it's dumb, maybe it's harassment, Maybe i don't agree with it) Maybe i'm trustworthy at flagging harassment but i get a little too trigger happy with posts i don't like or something

There's a lot of ways it can be made better and the whole decentralized thing gives an interesting opprotunity. Not only are your posts judged by your peers but your criticisms of posts and people are also judged by the same peers.

Could work, Or not, i don't know, Just thinking out loud, would totally be an interesting social experiment though or to see what others would come up with