I agree. It's discouraging that this isn't being addressed from the top down by Steemit Inc.
Utopian is an attempt at doing so - they have strict guidelines on the quality of posts they expect from contributors. But it targets a specific audience of writers.
On a platform as large as Steemit though, it would be impossible to moderate in a similar manner. So the tools to discourage this type of behavior have to be built into the mechanics of the interface and applied to all users equitably. One way is to simply limit the number of posts that one can seek rewards for during a specified time period.