I would like to add something:

Punishing the author for creating a following will not help grow Steem.

Of course. However, I think it also increases social interaction on the platform if people benefit from trying so seek, read and upvote great posts also (not only!) from unknown authors as well. Then new users would have a better chance to get noticed and rewarded.
The current system can easily get exploited by people (like for example haejin) with at least two accounts, who write 10 posts per day just to upvote them all with their other account(s) without 'diminishing returns'.