All good points. The voting system just isn't conducive to balanced discussion. It's a perfect recipe for group-think, especially when overseen by self-selecting moderators.

And to make matters worse, many subreddits rate-limit your account if you receive too many downvotes. You are literally silenced for posting unpopular opinions. They also usually block new accounts, so you can't even participate in the discussion via throwaway.

"Only posts that agree with us" isn't an official rule, but it might as well be.