Yes, this happens quite naturally I think and autovotes also work well for this until good people become lazy maximizers, hence it's up to curators at some point too to make sure a lot of rewards aren't being farmed in different ways.
Ask yourself how many of authors who may post daily and often get autovoted ever forfeit any rewards or downvote themselves if they feel they got overrewarded.
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This is why I think autovote decay would help this. It happens, I admit it 100% - there are accounts with $14, $15 dollar posts with no comments. But, and I will say this too. It doesn't really mean the post is shit, it could also mean the writer is not good at networking.
All this to say. It's not so clear cut. In my opinion it has to be analyzed. Like you've done. Without looking under the hood, we can't really know what's actually happening.
What about the users not abusing autovotes? Why should they get penalized if they're continuing to contribute for the votes?
Just downvote. It's quite simply, place them on autodownvotes if they don't do better, then look back after a while to see if they improved or fucked off.
There are many ways to skin a cat I guess.
But as you and I have discussed, there's a political cost to a full on confrontation too.
I'm sure you've heard a version of this saying at some point in time.
"He who enjoys tempting a thief is guilty of his own demise"
We currently have a system that is probably too tempting for thieves. There are people who probably say to themselves.
"Well, if I don't take advantage of this, I'm a dumbass"
I'd say in the name of being more effective. Any improvement we make to not make cheating too easy, is a good thing to do.
I'd go as far as to say, at this point, given the number of accounts who are ghost transacting. Keys are long gone, people are dead even, as we know.
If all that stake stopped moving, that along would move the reward pool assignation in others of magnitude above and beyond what any of us alone would achieve downvoting an abuser.