Like @ronja1 and yourself already said, monetary rewards have their pros and cons.
So right now, i feel like steem is going be an automated Business for a lot of the users. Monetary rewards are in my view, a great thing, and really atm, with this low user numbers, everyone has still the chance to have some impact in a niche category.
I believe that, at least 20 % of users here on steemit are used as bots, voting stuff up for some sbd or steem, or are just here to spam. And here comes issue with the bots. A lot of Post, having 50$+ already, are upvoted by 20+ people but just viewed by 5 or less. I for myself am using those numbers as an indicator if i am going to read/view the post or not, but with this system, i will not always read quality content, i will read the most upvoted content.
I hope i could tell you my hypotheses clear enough
You raised a good point