I hadn't realized the wide gap between a red fish and the other elite fishes. Yes, minnows are considered elite from a red fish perspective because it will take some time to get to even that status.
I concur that the current structure of rewards and incentives are not designed to support the newcomers to Steemit. There are talented writers and artists that simply go unnoticed because they don't have the right "connections". Some break out and are fortunate to have their talent discovered, but many of these individuals are the ones that are most active on here. They are able to dedicate more than a few hours on Steemit. Building relationships and connections is a wonderful thing to do on here, but some people are just not extroverts. They love to write or draw or express their talents, but may not have the "social" skills to make the necessary connections to succeed. Or they could be working professionals that don't have time to steemit 24/7, but would like to share their knowledge and interest when they do come online.
There has to be a reward structure in place that rewards active users for them to continue writing and putting out their best works and interests. We need to entice intellectual individuals on this platform. Or else, would they bother to spend hours writing a post when they would only get rewarded $0.05?
Make sense and thanks for the feedback @beeyou. I've seen many high quality posts that did not get even a dollar payout. I can't pull the posts statistics but my guess is, there are more high quality posts that weren't paid fairly than quality posts that received a decent pay out. Hence the 10% reward pool to me would make sense.