This is a well thought out and presented argument. Exactly what I have come to expect from you!
I have just read the white paper (finally gave up trying to get answers from others), and "Through the addition of negative-voting it is possible for many smaller stakeholders to nullify the voting power of collusive groups or defecting large stakeholders." is the reason for the downvote stated in the paper.
A problem with that premise is pandering. People who are focused on attaining wealth don't want to mitigate unfair systems of building wealth, they want to use them. This tendency is completely ignored in the white paper.
Given the dramatic concentration of rewards in a tiny handful of accounts that has been the standard on Steemit (since well before I got here last month) it is highly unlikely that developers haven't been aware of the issue.
Since the 4x reduction in labor necessary to drain VP implemented in HF19 increases the efficiency of concentrating wealth by self votes, I cannot surmise that there is intention to solve the problem. The developers are not imbeciles who couldn't have understood the consequences of that change.
I but note these facts, note also I am new hereabouts, and have often been wrong. I deliberately am not accusing anyone of abusing the system, or malicious intent. However, these facts seem pretty plainly to suggest certain conclusions about how Steemit is designed, and how it is being attacked.
A reason that wealth weighting was implemented is stated in the white paper to be resistance to sybil attacks. Since decentralization precludes being able to prevent multiple account creation, the possibility of sybil attacks is very real.
However, the present situation IS a sybil attack - only SP is the vector, as concentrated in single votes (or few), rather than multiple accounts possessing power. Since creating a single account (or few accounts) with attack force power requires only funds, and creating a massive number of accounts requires both funds and massive amounts of time, the present circumstance is vastly more favorable for the ongoing sybil attack(s) than that I propose.
Edit: unfortunately I have so drained my VP that I am unable to upvote your post. Please have a look if you suspect I am not being forthright. After reading the white paper, I have finally and reluctantly had to acknowledge that simply voting for content I find worthy is strongly discouraged by the draining mechanism for VP. I have to let it recover before my vote has any power. =/
No worries on the vote I am having to watch that myself. You are in the unfortunate predicament that the slider has not unlocked for you yet. It comes available somewhere around 480 steem power I was told by @l0k1 in his comments to this post. He is also working on trying to get that slider unlocked by default. It will help you maintain your steem power better.