Unfortunate but true: quality doesn't really matter in terms of reward (upvotes and money), what matters is high rep and/or a big network of supporters who will upvote almost everything you post regardless of quality.
That's not to say quality doesn't matter at all. Quality posts attract an audience. But once you have that audience, quality matters less.
It seems quite unfair, but that is how the world works, ne? Most Stephen King novels are going to instantly sell out even before they are released. They might be crap for all anyone knows, but his rep is high enough that people are trusting they will like the book and his audience is large enough that that means he is practically guaranteed a crap ton of money no matter what he writes. Whereas John Doe may write the world's greatest novel, and it might be reviewed as such, but it will gain few sales because he has neither rep for people to trust nor does he have an audience.
Oh well. All that's left for us small folk is to keep plugging away, trying to gain that audience one person at a time and building our network. On the bright side, if and when we do reach that level, we will have a lot of back material we can either republish or mine for future articles.
Interesting point of view, but when we'll do reach that level, whales and dolphins will be even greater and maybe that this gap remains unchanged if not got worse. We grow at 1+1 while they grow at 10+10...