You're right that it hurts everyone by lowering the value of the Steem network and raising the cost for witnesses. However, that is still the best method I can think of to teach the whales and flaggers to behave in a more respectful manner. It might hurt everyone, but it hurts the whales the most, which means that it could change their behavior. Hopefully, it would lead to an equilibrium wherein people show more respect for each other rather than trying to overpower one another.

Currently, whales believe that they can flag whatever they want because there is no recourse. For example, bloom does not post or comment, so the account owner views itself as immune to attack. It is not though, there are two ways to attack bloom. 1. downvote the people bloom upvotes, harming his/her ROI, 2. spamming the blockchain in protest, raising the cost to witnesses and lowering the quality of content on the new post area.

Obviously, you do not want to do this with an account that you hope to gain large reputation and keep followers interested in keeping you in their feed. But, just like they use accounts that do not vote or comment for offensive attack, you could create accounts that counter them with spam and free downvote use.

It is not my ideal for this to happen, but for the sake of free speech rights, fuck it...I'm willing to drain my RCs for the cause.