The problem with reward pool abuse is that it seems to be profitable in the short term, but in the long term you decrease the value of your own investments as well.

That's a very slippery slope. Only a few early birds could profit from it. Once it becomes obvious and more people start to join the party, the Steem Powers you have to hold to abuse the reward pool will start to decrease in value as well because of all the abuse.

You will seem to make money via rewards, but you'll start losing it via your Steem Power investment.

(Unless you live in the steemland where you pay your mortgage in steems of course. I've added this, because I heard too many times that the rewards are paid in tokens and therefore Steemit isn't actually losing money.)