I agree with you that owners flagging their customers is crazy, I couldn't believe when I saw that happening recently. Way to get rid of customers yourself, but the honest way would be to just undo the deal.

The honest way to get votes is consistency and networking. Like on any other social media platform. Of course luck plays a role too.
Any kind of buying, be it with liquid steem or with delegation, is a form of abuse and shifts the playing field towards those who can afford that.

There are a lot of people fighting real abuse, and the amount of manual curation has risen too. We're not at a point where everything would be great yet, but we got a bit closer.

Regarding decentalization, in my view we could be a lot further with that if the big userbase understood earlier that paying middle men to boost their short term profits doesn't help, and the good way would be investing in their own SP instead. Every buy from a bot, every rented delegation, filled the pockets of a few who now have disproportionate power without having done anything for that.
It's far from being centralized, as different groups have different goals, but I too would wish for a much better distribution. Doing my part, as everyone else should see what they can do. Complaining about not being able to feed the giants any more is certainly not the way.