Right, but nevertheless other altcoins, whose prices also denpend on the price of BTC, overtook STEEM, which is only ranked 60th at CoinMarketCap nowadays.

Doesn't matter. Profit is profit. If you think most people are here for the ideals, you are sadly mistaken. The reason why downvoting is so painful on this platform is because everyone views that Steem token as potentially the ticket to massive gains.

Then again, there's also psychology. People complain about being downvoted by tiny votes from @camillesteemer and their hundreds of alts that literally amount to nothing.

That, and also the unrealistic mindset that this is the place to supplement their income. It can be, but it's impossible to be that way for everyone. People like @baah are on the rare side of the spectrum where "Que Será, Será" is the mantra when it comes to rewards. Ideally, only serious content creators and large stakeholders should care about the rewards.

Look at the comments under this article for example: a whale upvoted his own comment to the top and flagged another comment which actually got way more upvotes.

Because @transisto has been one of the most vocal large stakeholders about this issue. The "more votes" you see simply come from people looking to counter his downvote.

It's hard to make a judgement call on the proposal when I do see the positive and negative side of things, but I do know that status quo is not good.