... but my fear is that those doing the actual work to look for new authors and content wouldn't have an advantage over just casting their vote on "whatever they like"
But at least more people would 'dare' to upvote what they like! Maybe they wouldn't upvote posts like this, this or this one anymore?
I guess many users feel bad about their own voting behaviour but think they had to do so to claim their part of the 'rewards cake'.
Yes, some users would upvote just anything (and some others could flag then that 'anything'), but I think the majority would be happy to have the new freedom to explore new posts and be able to reward them without the bad conscious of wasting curation rewards.
If you earned the same amount of money anyway: what would you upvote, a shit post of an overpaid popular user or a great travel report of a newbie?
Don't you think the majority would do the same?