I can't speak to the system architecture, but as a noob moron trying to navigate here, I do have a few concerns. Looking at this like any other decentralized, free market, it seems odd to me that a whale's upvote (which is like their approval currency) has greater weight than a minnow's. Their level of influence should probably be more a function of purchasing power (the ability to vote for more than a minnow), but a vote from anyone should count as a vote. Currency should be valued equally system-wide.
Steemit strikes me as similar to the book publishing industry before the internet and on-demand publishing made it accessible for everyone to self publish and self promote. 99.99% of authors never had a chance of being accepted by a corporate publisher, and 99.99% of authors here don't seem to have a chance of being accepted by the whales - content quality is beside the point. You just don't get seen, as the whales are either inundated or prefer to focus on the posts of their friends. That said, I'm not going to give up on it, not yet, until I better understand the system. Hopefully my concerns can be easily explained away by those more knowledgeable.