In the white paper flagging is clearly described as necessary to allow a decentralized community to control spam, plagiarism, and such toxic simulacra of free speech.

They further describe how the community can resist the kinds of censorship considered here, and flag wars were born.

However, their calculations considered that 30% of rewards, and thus stake, and thus VP, would inure to the general community, and probably less than 1% of rewards actually do today.

(the author rewards chart dates from just prior to HF19, but is probably applicable today)

Thanks to @arcange for these charts!

Rather than a small or moderately sized group of folks being able to succeed in preventing abusive flagging, even should 10,000 krill rise up to try under current conditions, they would be unable.

The oligarchical concentration of rewards has rendered flags nuclear weapons in the hands of whales, and less than pea-shooters in the hands of krill.

This wasn't the stated intention of the devs.