I reply here to your comment earlier (and this post)...
"We resent those who have more than we have. At least many of us do."
Really?.
Oh yes! One of the oldest books in the world, the Bible, contains the story of Cain and Abel, which is about envy and how it poisons the mind.
What a crap mental place to inhabit.
Absolutely! I posted about that the other day.
Envy is a shite emotion.
I don't envy so can't really comment on that ( I don't get it, tbh).
It's an emotion that possibly evolved or is a byproduct of something that evolved in small groups where the division of scarce resources is an ever present problem.
It is short sighted in the extreme, and from what I see, it ain't changing.
From my perspective, the EIP introduced in HF 21 on Steem made a huge difference. The largest bid bots on the platform became curators who've upvoted posts by thousands of different authors who would've never been given the time of day before HF 21.
As happens time and time again- the greed and shortsighted view killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
That criticism was much more relevant back in the old days than it is now. Go to the GEMS Community, for example. You'll see an endless stream of posts valued at $10 by authors who are absolutely not part of any powerful circle jerks.
Seriously, the circle jerk criticism is starting to get old. I challenge you to find a platform where a newbie without a long history can earn anything. It's ALWAYS the case that time on platform, audience building and networking play a significant role in earnings.