This analysis, like other similar ones, assumes that a vote for a third party is a vote "stolen" from one of the two major parties. Which implies that those two parties "own" votes, since you can't steal what someone else doesn't own. Which strikes me as a very disrespectful attitude, all in all.
In my opinion, the mistake is here:
"If you don’t vote for a plausible candidate, then you lose the right to complain when you don’t like what happens."
You're placing the full responsibility on the person who, given the bad choices, with one slightly better than another, elected to not choose either. I think that responsibility in this case rests largely with those who proffer the choices. In other words, if you want, say, Jill Stein supporters to vote Democrat, well then, Democrats should 1) adopt a platform that clearly makes them a much better choice for Greens, and 2) offer a candidate that represents that platform in a convincing way. You don't "own" those voters - it's up to you to convince them to vote for you. If they aren't convinced and vote for someone else, and you lose, the fault is largely yours.
And from their perspective, they are doing the rational thing - by rejecting your candidate for not doing enough to accommodate them, they're strategically voting to push you towards either offering a better choice next time, or reforming the electoral system such that they can express their preferences in a way that affects you less (e.g. by adopting some form of transferable vote). From their perspective, they sacrifice the chance to let the "lesser evil" block the "greater evil" in one particular electoral cycle, for a very long-ended play to try to change the rules of the game in their advantage, so that at some point they can actually get "good" elected.
This isn't to say that there is a certain amount of responsibility for not anticipating indirect effect of your vote, given the constraints of the political system. Depending on how much is at stake, the strategy above is not always applicable, if the losses in the current electoral cycle would be more than anticipated long-term gains. Many people, myself included, believe that this cycle is one of those, and that the long-term goal requires allying with the "lesser evil" for the duration of the crisis.