Thanks Alexandros, this was well articulated.

Beyond PageRank, I feel this pattern has applicability in many areas of everyday life, especially those related to large organizations, such as employers judging potential employees by the name of the university they attended...

So a person who goes to a prestigious school and games the system in order to graduate [without actually getting smarter] is something of a "spam worker." The OBP process is incentivizing earning a degree from a good school, and taking the emphasis off of getting smart.

I'd spent plenty of time thinking about SEO, and plenty of time thinking about people seeking prestige via academic institutions, but has never noticed the parallel.

...I have more written material on this subject, especially on possible methods of counteracting this effect...

I would be interested in hearing about those methods. I'm in the business of producing legitimate news (feel funny calling it "content"), and am unhappy with the amount of time I must spend making sure my website stays out of the false negative space.

Also, I wonder if the methods you have thought of would also apply to these parallel situations in society.