If they see someone who has powered everything down now complaining about lack of support, they are less likely to support that person because, they don't necessarily see it as in their best interest to do so.

Isn't that just another reason to suppose that content hardly enters into the equation? My own rough-and-ready experiments show that, after vote buying, the size of ones wallet is the most important predictor of the size of upvotes one gets, much more so than the content one posts, when perhaps in a properly functioning Steemit this shouldn't be the case?

Anyway, this behaviour may be natural and human and all that, but it is counterproductive if you want a change in distribution, as it is one of the many mechanisms here where making money with money trumps making money with content.