See my point about hiary dogballs above. Yes, it sucks that @smooth can remove a large part of the rewards of a post. Yes it sucks that @jamesc can give a large amount of rewards to a post (especially since that amount is taken from everyone else recieving rewards.). The huge disparity between the early miners and the average userbase is one of the worst qualities of steemit (and this is an opinion that i expect many whales would agree with)
I don't agree at all with @smooth 's particular take here. In fact, i think @kernl is one of the better posters on the platform. But at the end of the day, the existance of whales and the huge disparity between the biggest actors and everyone else on the platform has benefitted kernl, not harmed him. Even in determining the payout for this post smooth downvoted, kenrl gained more from the @jamesc upvote than he did from the smooth downvote. This disparity in power between the largest users and the average made the payout to this particular post higher, not lower.
There are exceptions, but on steem the people who are hurt most by the disparity in power between whales and the average user are the little guys who get no rewards or almost no rewards when they post because whale upvotes assign most of the rewards to other posters.
Point well made.