"I thought he might be lying about the percentage of the pool,"
Seems to be a lot of confusion on this point. It's possible it was unintentional. The people involved don't seem to care much about the facts.
"And some of those currently controlling these armies are just as guilty of "raping" the reward pool at times as many."
This is often a grave understatement. I would argue they are, in fact, generally the largest abusers of all.
I'd have to see a breakdown of statistics to see if they were the largest abusers. :P But personally, I think $600 payouts should be reserved for EPIC posts.
I got a $300 curation from currie for the first chapter in my book. I really don't know if it was worth that TBH, but it caused me to continue the story with fervor, despite never getting a payout anything close to that for the following 14 chapters I've now done. SBD was $11 at payout if I remember correctly, so I'm fine with some chapters earning less than $1 even, and others getting $10 or $20. I hope by the end that people will see it as undervalued, but I honestly don't even know.
After writing some of those chapters for multiple hours, and feeling like I was going to bleed out of my eyes after writing some of them, being utterly exhausted, and literally pouring everything I have into them. Even with that, I honestly don't know if it's really worth the rewards I've gotten from it. I can't imagine how people feel entitled to insane rewards for things they don't pour their everything into.