The idea of your post is respectable @anomadsoul, we definitely want to avoid letting steemit turn into a place where only the standard "steemit celebrities" get to have big payouts all the time.
However from my experience in curating for @curie, @ocd (briefly), and now helping to launch the @sndbox-alpha trail as well, I will say: The problem IMO is mostly not that some people are taking too many rewards. It's more that there is a lack of upvote-able content from newer users
MANY new users post content that is simply not of acceptable quality. Generally speaking it is my belief that anybody who makes high quality posts (i.e. good format, grammar, original content, and at least a few minutes long whether 300+ words or a few minutes of good quality video) can get upvotes from some of the major curation initiatives going around Steemit.
Thus I think the best move for our current successful users is to mentor newbies and help them improve their content. There's plenty of room at the top of Steemit for now - we just need to help teach our newer members how to create reasonably good content.
Then I agree with @anomadsoul.
Many times I feel that my work is not valued enough (However, my thanks go to @curie, I received one time his vote).