Great post, Jason. I just replied to @jpiper's latest post with many of these same ideas. Trust has to be earned. The mind that is okay with fraudulent behavior is a mind which can't be trusted unless it changes through building new habits. Being sorry for being caught isn't true regret.
Edit: Oh, forgot to mention, a big problem with the reputation system (as I understand it) is 80%+ of steemit could flag him and his reputation would be unchanged. Only high reputations can impact lower reputations. My reputation is 66 so my flag, I think, doesn't do anything to a 67. Only the whales can make a difference here. And if a whale "goes bad"? Well, then there's not much we can do.
That is gold and perfectly sums up the point of my post.
Regarding the impact of flags from lower rep scores, it appears there is a minuscule impact to reputation but not enough to make any real difference.
I'm really surprised @ned was so quick to upvote his apology post in the first 20 minutes of posting. I'd like to see every whale flag the plagiarised posts to see some reality reflected in his rep score, if possible.