RE: Why the Whale War might be good for Steemit
Fair enough.
But don't you think they should react by either making better posts, voting for content they liked which would have diverted earnings away from Haejin.
No. What haejin is doing constitues voting abuse and really should be dealt with directly. It would be like if Oprah bought a billion dollars worth of steem and then came here upvoted Stedman to 50% of the reward pool. The fact that the self-voting is done through a proxy doesn't negate its effect on the platform. By dealing with the user directly, you send the message that their actions are not tolerable.
The white paper isn't the Bible, but it is sound reasoning on the way Steem was designed.
Many have talked about changing the system, but change takes time and in this instance requires a hardfork to the Steem BlockChain. In the meantime, the situation demands that it be addressed via currently available means.
I'll think on possible solutions. I did write something on Self-voting and reputation on my blog, but that was only slightly related.
How can you tell Haejin has scammed the system?
Using certain tools, you can tell who upvoted the content and how much those upvotes are worth. While haejin would have you believe that his success here is due to his followers, in actuality, it is mostly due to a single user and himself. The user in question is a big whale with a lot of steempower and Haejin speaks for his upvotes and downvotes.
This information is available on the block chain via several tools, one of which is https://steemworld.org. I'd advise you to verify what I'm telling by looking at that site and putting haejin's username. You can tell who votes on each post and how much those votes are worth.