Well lets just look at steemstem content, I know some information about this one. It works by upvoting good scientific content. Its upvotes is worth roughly $80 at 100%,
Whales ignore it and refuse to help us out
Spammers make $300-$2000 a day
and well, when their motivation is money, they will go with the easy $300 a day over the $10 to $100 that the steemstem trail will offer....
If we leave them to be and have at it the way they are going, they will destroy the reward pool (i.e. rewardpoolrape) and then leave with the 100's of thousands they walked away with while us doing actual work on making a post will walk away with a few hundred to a couple thousand...
Flagging, by the way, is non-violent. It is us disagreeing and allowing or voice to be heard, it is a discussion of voting weight. Does it work perfectly? no, but is sure as shit does way more than doing nothing.