I know it was a long post and I may well have added important parts of it in an edit you missed but I'm not sure what question you think you're answering.

I didn't just ask why it was a problem, I was asked why is the solution not being demanded at the code level. It is impossible for it to be truly solved unless you change the smart contract rules that govern Steemit. Unfortunately as far as I understand it you'd not be able to change enough to actually completely close the loophole even if you did, not without changing something fundamental.

Flagging will absolutely not work and can't possibly work. All you're doing is trying to push the water back in a leaking bucket. Well it's a losing battle that's why people are finding they're not getting anywhere. I really have no idea why anyone thought flagging would be any effective way to deal it.

The entire system of flagging is like the most basic possible placeholder one could have added, just so there's SOMETHING. It's one catch-all button. You can see people refer to flagging interchangeably with "down voting" which is quite telling knowing how people normally use up/down voting or like/disliking on places like Youtube and Reddit. Here since flagging is the only option people can use so they will use it to signify their disagreement as well as being the same button to press if someone uploaded child porn or death threats or to complain it was their content that was stolen. You only get one button and it all goes in the same flagging pot.

The entire reason this is a problem at all is that voting power is linked directly with post rewards, be that upvoting (give rewards) or flagging (take away rewards). It has nothing whatsoever do with the content it has nothing whatsoever to do with how many people upvote the content. Now of course in theory we HOPE that good/popular content will eventually coincidentally also get voted on by those with significantly powerful up votes. But the fact that hundreds of people can be overruled by or made totally insignificant against a single powerful upvote, means that the very foundation of which Steemit functions works in a way that creating content people enjoy, find valuable and quality is completely disconnected from the reward pool.

Why do people make so many lame posts? Why do people make so many posts which you can see they put the bare minimum amount of effort into it that they think they can get away with? Because you're insentivised to do that! Because you know you can buy an upvote and the role you post plays in the game is just a means to an end. The appropriate attitude to foster is one where you need a certain amount of consensus that has nothing to do with voting power so that if you put no effort in you can't get rewarded like that. The attitude should be one where you are always thinking about what value your post could bring to other people, because you need them to be rewarded. Currently we have a system where the power of the vote is what matters, where that vote doesn't need to come from a person that values your content and which you can even buy.

The upvote value does not indicate quality anymore than someone with a powerful flag on a post means there's anything wrong with the content whatsoever. All flagging is doing is highlighting the other side of this serious flaw within the the system.

The rewards need to be connected to something which have some direct relationship with the value people find it's contents. So long as you can literally make a post valuable by sticking money to it then you'll never get what you really want, which is undoubtedly what the original intention of Steemit was - That the monetary rewards a post generates actually represents the value people find it to have and so if you failed to grab anyones attention you'd therefore not get rewarded for it