Clvr is said to be paid by smartsteem.

You saw me speculate it, but it was never confirmed.
It is paid by smartsteem as a fact.
The question is: for what?
Another fact is it fights spam.

Im even encouraging people to overbid them.

Most people will lose if they will try to overbid them.
There are also people whom do not deserve to be crushed.
This spam bot made me softer on the rest, because I see how more dangerous and efficient it is.

It is frustrating that the folks with the power to fix things refuse to do so.

This is the situation.

But i guess stinc wouldnt have made things this way if they were against abuse.

What do STINC have to do with it?
Their job is to maintain steemit.com and manage registrations.