People are attracted to high reputation posters on Steemit. No matter what they post what they write (or more often, don't write), they always get tens to hundreds of upvotes and earn big money.
That's how it works in life, brother, and that's how it also works at Steemit. Better get used to it.
Many people who havn't liked Steemit complain about issues like this. It's an issue of the culture of the site which is constantly changing and has room to be improved as this is a young platform. I disagree with your that's life sentiment.
On Reddit people who spam or steal content are often downvoted. On Youtube there's mechanisms to have your content removed when it's reposted by others. I think the community as a whole should put more thought into what they are rewarding.
Again its not my site, I don't make the rules, just giving my opinion of what I think would improve this community.
I guess that is what I'm questioning. Is that what we want Steemit to be? Anyone with a high rep is rewarded by teh rest of the community regardless of whether it's deserved or not?
The rest just gets a little less.
One thing that could be done is not show the upvotes in an article, no amount and no rep number of the author. Would be an interesting experiment to see what the behaviour of Steemit users would be.
I have considered that before, but those details are still available on the blockchain, so people would just move over to busy.org or some other site, giving themselves an edge.