I know that once a user passes 1000 reputation (or 750 in a smaller site), they gain the ability to see vote-counts, rather than vote total (upvotes - downvotes). However, I don't really understand what purpose this serves. I know that some activities are not given to a new user to prevent spam/abuse (for example, limited voting, commenting, etc.), but what's the harm in letting a new user see vote-count?
And also, it seems to me like certain abilities or more important than vote-counts, but received earlier. For example, a user with 500 rep is trustworthy enough to downvote, award bounties, access the review queues and some other things, but not yet trustworthy enough to see how many down vs up votes a question has.
Why is this privilege designed the way it is? Also keep in mind, I'm not trying to change it, I just want to understand the thought-process behind it, since it doesn't make much sense to me.