Agree with you... flag is used for spam/abuse/plagiarism. But I believe Steemit doesn't have dislike button because they rather have interactions where we leave comment of our disagreement.
As for war between the whales, that is inevitable and best we let nature runs its course. As long as the fundamental of Steemit is strong, we should be okay. At the end of the day, Steemit is decentralised and as ugly as thing can get, we need to let it be.
but we must avoid allowing it to get to a point where the strong minority has control and power over the weak majority
Agreed, the rich gets richer concept applies here in Steemit as well... all you need is to have a few individuals who each dump $100k into their Steemit wallet and they can destroy the ecosystem of the system which is unfair to the majority of us who are planktons and minnows.
another major flaw from what I gather is that you equally give out your vests to any number of people you vote (not lower if you use all 30 than if you vote for 1 only) if enough whales vote together they control who is a witness