I don't agree with it either, but that's what is going on. If you don't participate your stake becomes worth less than those do.
I actually give out real votes though, most of the people voting early are giving out the smallest vote they can and it is nothing about distributing rewards. Just look at the first five minutes of any post to see what I am talking about.
I know what r u talking about since I am manually curating and it is frustrating to compete with those autovotes and it demotivates me a lot. I can't even read a full fckin post and all of a sudden it gets autovoted like crazy.
But, I won't go to the dark side and auto vote. At least not yet while I have some motivation left in me.