"But with a flag you don't lose any money"
Not only do you lose anything earned on the post, you lose reputation points!
There are serial flagers out there with bots who have no problem flagging a post simply for who upvoted the post.
Why bother putting your creativity out there just to have it hidden and all value lost because you get an upvote from someone a whale is at war with and the whale attacks you?

How is a minnow ever going to get ahead? They can't. I guess they could creat 100's of accounts and up-vote themselves!
I know several content creators who are under constant attack
Do something about the abusers or it won't matter what you do.