Not enough flags taking place. I think that people lose sight of the longterm because they are literally unable to control their massive voting power.

With great voting power comes great responsibility. Many of these people have never owned or ran a business in their lives. Your theory isn't too far fetched though, and I've got a similar theory.

I wonder if whales are creating dummy accounts so that they can cash out discretely.

A bit more on the conspiracy side, but it would make sense when I consider iniertia's post about dan leaving steemit.

I've already mentioned him regarding this more than once, so don't want to do it again and attract unwanted attention if he's gonna say I'm comment spamming his name. What alarms me the most was his response:

So are some people cashing out expecting a pending collapse of the site?

The decentralized aspect brings forth much self governance (and responsibility).

At this point, the people who can make a difference, have seemingly abandoned the platform. If that's the case, it is up to us to come together and take justice into our own hands, for the sake of the platform.

Otherwise, I feel it's all downhill from here. It's possible that this is just an obstacle, and not even the abuse can cause steem to fail, but if the big guys are jumping ship, we have a serious problem. The more focused on upvotes people are, the worse it's going to get.

When I watch rewards dwindle, I go flagging. Everyone should do the same.

Currently it appears that the daily rewards pool has depleted, and as other, bigger whales upvote, it takes away from already curated content. When flags take place, I see that the rewards go back up significantly.

So if the rewards pool is more or less depleted for the day, everyone should be proactively flagging the shit out of all shit posts. If we did this, sure, our voting power would go down dramatically, but our rewards would skyrocket, making it worth the 2-4 day wait to recharge.