While I totally agree with you, This "whale problem" is really hard to solve. Maybe if value of upvotes/flags increased on less than linear scale, it would help, but then they would just create lots of bot accounts copying what the main account is doing. But controlling those bot accounts would mean it would require more effort and investment of time/money, so it would be a little bit less profitable for them.
The biggest problem still remains without solution, though: these whales basically control what changes happen to the platform, and they will never give the green light to changes that would take power and money away from the whales.