Bad user experience exist because people are so greedy that they think about potential rewards as if they were their already. They aren't.
Steem users decide what content should be rewarded more (by allocating positive reward shares) and what should be rewarded less (by allocating negative reward shares).
Because in first case they are directly rewarded for such choice (via curation rewards or in case of self-voting also via author rewards), they tend to do that much, much, much more frequently than in the second case.
It's far easier to accept "random" upvote than "random" downvote.
Downvoting others wouldn't maximize your rewards. It returns potential rewards back to the pool so they can be shared by everyone. Moreover, community would be able to respond to "unfair" downvotes without cost (to some extent, i.e. % pool)

In the end, Steem is all about reaching consensus, in this case consensus on value of post, thus how it should be rewarded.
We are not ripped off when our content is downvoted.
We are ripped off when our Reward Pool is ripped by abusers.