While I am not a fan of it, I have less to gain by not doing it as you pointed out in your section on whales. There is more financial gain for them to self vote. My point of view might change if I had more of my skin invested in the system. I have not invested anything more content into the forum. For those that have invested processing power or purchased Steem to grow their account, there should be some expectation of return on investment. The nature of the platform is what it is, we have all signed up for it and we must accept how functions. We all have a choice, we can take our content to other platforms and try to monetize that content.