I find it hard to feel a lot of sympathy for posts still generating over $100 in rewards post-downvote

This is the case where I understand the "disagreement on rewards" reason for downvoting. At least on some level. Although not on the level of downvoting the given post to 0. There should be some kind of balance. There is definitely a problem with the reward distribution and with the visibility. Some authors getting more than $100, while most people do not even get few dollars.