The basket of crabs analogy is referred to in the orginal Steem whitepaper. It's part of the core consensus design of Hive. This is how things were supposed to work. That doesn't make it great for the survivors, but it's an expected outcome.

The Hive whales do not understand the implications of Metcalfe's Law, and their efforts to police voting purity have destroyed more value than it would be possible for 'abusers' to have extracted from the rewards pool over the entire life of the chain, even if 100% of rewards went to abuse.