Got to keep calm and remember that the wheels turn slowly in this kind of decentralized, widely distributed setting. Got to pick your battles, and start with small, incremental achievable steps. Finally, you've got to have faith in a majority that thinks like you, whose dream is that Steemit be home to quality along the lines of Stack Exchange, to name one example. This is not something that happens overnight. It requires networking and stamina, lots of stamina. Personally, I don't have any problem with self-upvoting. I distribute my voting power equally between others and myself. And I deserve every penny I make because I always post quality. Always. Can't say the same for others unfortunately, but they're not my concern either. Sure it gets my goat, but that's how the system is made, and the hope is that the gaming of the platform will slowly lose out, if, and this is a big IF, those of us committed to quality focus on the positive and let the negative wallow in its own mire. That having been said, I agree that changes should be made, but we need to have reasonable expectations and not see this as all or nothing, now or never. Gather your data, prioritize your actions, and slowly move forward. You know that there are lots of people like us outside the inner circle of "whales", and some within I'm positive, who are going to be in basic agreement on this. The big question is how, how much, and how soon? I'd say a good start would be the elimination of downvoting all together forcing everyone to start focusing exclusively on the positive.

I don't think it would be fair to put any kind of cap on rewards because of posts like this one (which, in fact, I think should have made more!): https://steemit.com/dtube/@sndbox/ll4ld67n