Haejin made a lot of profits and money from this site way before rancho started upvoting his content. Nobody ever said anything about it.
The system was designed with the flagging mechanism for this specific reason. If people don't agree with the rewards, they should downvote because the reward pool belongs to them too. This is covered in the section in the whitepaper about the crab bucket.
It would be different if the funds in question were rancho's own. They are not. He is upvoting in a way that many users disagree with, at their expense. That's why his upvotes should be corrected by those users.