Well you may have made a tiny bit more than you would have otherwise. There are accounts taking tens of dollars every day for no benefit to the Steem platform. At least haejin has mostly given up. It is better since most of the bots changed tactic, but some still operate. Are you happy for people to buy votes on junk posts?
Steem is the wild west and you do not have to conform to any rules. I certainly do not agree with all the abuse fighters and this is why I only downvote manually as I want to check each case for myself. It has gained me some enemies, but I am prepared to pay that price.
I am not into 'flag wars'. I only retaliate in extreme cases where people get abusive towards me to make their comments invisible. Other actually seem to enjoy some conflict.
Read the Steem white paper about the importance of downvotes.
The problem with flags / downvotes is not that they are wrong as a system to regulate the pending payouts or to fight abuse, but for their negative emotional implications for a regular person who is otherwise non-conflictual (for both the downvoter and the downvotee I believe; and probably for the watchers of the spectacle as well).
I know it has been a major effort to rebrand flags into downvotes for exactly this reason: to try to soften the negative implications of using the term flag.
But, in essence, the functionality is the same. Actually, I'm wrong: downvotes are more powerful than the former flags, since there is a free downvote pool.
In a war, there are always battles won and battles lost. But it's still a war. And some people want peace (I know, what an utopia!).
Steem may be wild west, but communities don't have to be and probably won't be.
The fact remains that abuse would be rampant without them. There has to be a disincentive.