I second that. I have in my short time here never --'ed a post and am never going to regardless of how long I stay. There is a slight purpose to the -- in that flames or otherwise undesirable content may catch a lot of downvotes and thus bubble into the attention of moderators. But couldn't that just be handled explicitly by a "Condemn this post" link that reports a node?

(Btw: Amen was a great idea to use instead of ++, nice attention to detail :) Inspired me to use "condemn" rather than "report" too :))