there is no way you can make people earn less by saying "hey please only upvote content you feel is valuable and don't just upvote because it's popular", so imo this whole post is complete nonsense.
It's not working, and is not our duty, it's the codes responsibility to make it work, people will always go the least friction way, and when the most optimal way to earn steem is to upvote popular posts rather then unpopular ones that have quality.
please don't think bitcoin is successful because people wanting to make banks obsolete, it's working because people can make money with it, ofc there is a large driving force that consists of people that want to do good, but they only can do so because it's giving them money.