About 90% of voting power is being used to collude or self-vote,
There is simply no way to collude or reward yourself with flagging.
While most people think flagging is stealing money from people the reality is that it is the most benevolent action that can be done on Steem.
Ps: Didn't read your post, Just giving some of "My take on flagging".
To summarize: I flag as it is healthy for the platform. But I flag only scammers and spammers. My power is still to low.
Even with a low power, doing so shows that people are being aware of the fact they are being terrible users, getting a flag out to the right account can help people spot a scam or be hidden to it before sbd or private keys gets lost. Phishers, Memo scammers, and the like are a very serious issue here especially for new comers. Not to mention it makes sense as a community not only to flag bad posters but post about the truly bad and let others know that they need to follow suit especially if your downvote doesnt obliterate them on its own, not everybody has sp like @berniesanders to ruin an account with one downvote.
That approach seems reasonable. I think a dislike button should be added. The flag button should be reserved for spammers, scammers, plagiarism, abusive content, etc.... The dislike button should be used for people to express their disagreement with the content. The dislike function should not allow for censorship. Both buttons should offer some sort of reward or else people won't use them.
This idea has been expressed before but I think it has been buried in the comments of another post. I think it is an idea that should be taken seriously.
Self voting and colluding is quite a problem. Many quite good solutions have been thrown around but it seems that the developers do not feel this problem is a priority. Just take a look at the trending page, how many potential investors (real investors and not crypto nerds) have decided to run when they see 70% garbage. That is what self voting and colluding is getting us. Leaving @transisto, @berniesanders and a few others attempting a clean up is not exactly a workable long term solution.