I think when people trade up-vote for up-vote and offer to do that for a lot of people, they only display their lack of understanding of the Steemit platform because after a certain amount of up-votes, your voting weight decreases and time must be set aside for it to "recharge"; moreover, as your voting weight decreases, so do the payouts you are able to offer other individuals for their content. I think the bigger issues on Steemit involve individuals posting copyrighted material and things that are illegal. How would you go about removing copyrighted material and illegal things from the blockchain? I think in those cases, decreasing visibility by flagging might be the only option (I'm not sure). As far as the tons of plug-ins and things you have to learn as a Steemit user, I think individuals should just learn as much as they feel the need to learn and discover in order to create the content they believe to be the cream of the crop.
I think most of them know very well how voting power works. It just doesn't matter to them, because it the voting power of others that matters to them, not their own.
Good point, I didn't think of that.