But hypothetically, If I wanted to hijack all this I could pay cash for steem and throw approval around at dumb ideas but that would be cash out of my pocket and into theirs which is kind of like paying damages anyways
You would gain some of the money back through the curation share (half the money on a post goes to the author, and half to the people voting. The amount the people voting get is weighted by how much steem power you have).
So your investment in steem power could pay off handily (the power resets after 24 hours of not voting and in theory you could make money indefinitely by voting every 24 hours. This is the whole reason why some people have set up bots to vote.
That's another question I had, couldn't a guy set up a program to just upvote ALL the newest articles as they come out and if they get popular, he gets rich, if not, no skin off his nose... Or does upvoting unpopular things have the potential to drain your steem? If it does than wouldn't people be less likely to flesh out and discuss unpopular ideas like alternative rightwing stuff for instance?
Your voting power decreases when you cast a vote, and recovers over time. When you vote a lot, your vote is worth less and you receive less. You can check your current voting power at https://steemd.com/@paul-labossiere in the table on the left.