Ok, you seem obnoxiously reasonable.
Can you email this to my wife? :D
Do you think people should be downvoted into oblivion by larger accounts, simply for posting "low-effort" content like "word of the day"?
It depends. If they are doing it ten times a day, Selfvoting each and farming Steem, probably. If it is a once a day kind of thing, I don't see the issue with it. I think intention matters.
I would also say that the value of the post would matter to all kinds of sized accounts too. If someone was getting 30 dollars on these posts, I would suspect it would be getting some downvotes, but a dollar or two (from the community) and no one would mind. When it comes to low-effort content, if many people think it is value adding, that is what it is. However, that changes when someone (especially with a large vote) believes their own content is valuable consistently.
At the end of the day, I think that while imperfect, the Steem voting up/down system is somewhat more honest than the hidden algorithms that platforms use to manipulate rewards for some over others.
I will add:
When it comes to freedom of speech concerns, downvotes have nothing to do with it as there are plenty of interfaces that will show it regardless and it doesn't remove it from the blockchain. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that a person should also be able to earn on what they say.