Curation is typically 500-1000% less profitable than any other use of Steem Power, it's a tough sell, especially to whales with a lot of stake.
This is what you can expect from curation rewards as a "good" curator. (Most users are not good curators)
With low Steem Power, curation rewards are even less as they are n squared and yield higher curation rewards with larger Steem Power holders.
While I wish it was different, it's how the current system is. I do agree though with the original comment, finding a way to keep low SP/reputation users is critical. Finding a way to cut the no/low effort low SP users from the users actually putting in effort is another problem altogether.