It's a compromise that has worked fairly well, balancing population versus the independent needs of states. Throwing out that balance could fundamentally unsettle the US, because many states would quickly become tired of New York and California telling them how to live their lives.
...as opposed to people in California and New York, states which create disproportionately large amounts of the national wealth, being told what to do by people in small states which don't have to manage the issues California and New York have to in order to keep the national economy moving.
When you're in a small state with disproportional voting power you end up with more money coming back to your state than it contributes in federal taxes, so you can afford to act out and pretend we can all live in a screw the government utopia - the big states you're sticking your thumb in the eye of have to pay the tab.
Considering that there has only been three elections where the winner of the electoral vote did not win the popular vote, per Wikipedia, it stands to reason that California and New York have roughly the same amount of influence either way. Therefore it is silly for them to complain over the system in place because it more than likely would still be what would be in place if the Presidential election was decided by popular vote.
Personally, I think this issue comes from a confusion of how the electoral college works and how Congress works. The things you say that bother California and New York are not determined by the electoral college, which is used to elect the President, it is in fact how Congress itself works. If those two states are bothered by smaller states telling them what to do then the problem lies with Congress, not how the President is elected.
It is only in the Senate where a smaller state gets the same amount of influence as every other state since they all get an equal number of votes. The electoral college electors and House of Representative members are determined by population count. The problem with a possible mismatch between popular vote and the electoral college is that states tend to be winner takes all, which they can change anytime they want since a state determines how its electors are chosen.
It's true that the electoral college gives small states a slight boost in representation in the presidential election. This is due to the fact that the number of electors is a function of the number of congresspeople and small states have, relative to their population, more congresspeople because of the existence of the senate and rounding error when determining number of representatives.
With regard to whether getting rid of that advantage in electors in order to modernize the system would unfairly shift the balance of power, read the above paragraph again. The small states already have an advantage in representation in Congress. That doesn't go away if we make the election of the president rely on a popular vote.
