Cheap/free downvotes are the answer (or at least, the best chance at an answer that I know of; I am not sure that even that will work, but consider it worth a try). It won't make sense to pay for votes when those votes can be easily downvoted if merit doesn't support it.

Until this happens, nothing will change, except that matters will continue to get worse.

It doesn't happen (yet?) because of a combination of people who are misguided and think 'toxicity' is a reason not support downvotes and those who profit from the existing system (including those who profit and spread the 'toxicity' myth to obstruct change and protect their own interests).

Either this gets fixed or we can just ignore the concept of voting for rewards and build other value on top of Steem. There are plenty of ways to do the latter. For example, consider Steem Monsters, which has nothing to do with voting at all. (But in that case we should really just disable the reward pool so that unnecessary growth of the blockchain size and cost due to pointless bidbotting and vote selling is avoided.)