I agree with you! I've posted more than once about how sometimes it makes sense for authors to do decline payout posts if they think they have been taking more of the rewards pool than is justified.

I think your argument goes both ways: if whales blindly upvote someone even when they increase their posting rate, that's still a failure of the upvoter. They should either stop upvoting or adjust the weight of their vote accordingly.

The cryptocurrency markets experienced some intense volatility recently and some may have benefitted from @haejin's increased frequency of posting. I could argue that one in either direction so I didn't get involved. I won't defend him or vilify him just yet. If he wanted to show good faith with the community, he could get the same visibility he wants with decline payout posts. My hunch is, the whales wouldn't vote for him as they'd get no curation rewards on a decline payout.

So again, the whale vote is the problem.