I have mixed feelings. It's a great article, and presents a way of looking at downvoting that I hadn't considered before, to keep profits on any one piece of work from becoming unreasonable. But $2500 does seem excessive.
I think the main issue is that downvoting has a negative connotation in most people's minds. When I see a flagged piece, my gut reaction is "hmm, is this person trouble? What did they do to break the rules?". Which is totally unfair to the author if the flag was merely used by a whale to keep profits in check. And that particular use case might not be obvious unless the whale leaves a clear comment explaining the reasoning behind it.
I think the easiest solution would be to make it impossible to upvote your own posts and comments. Let other people be the judge of how much value your work brings to the community!