Asking for a resteem and networking is very much apart of the game. The people who are at the time have either put in the money, put in the time, know the right people, got in early, are good at what they do, are working hard in the background as a developer, or all of the above. It's not a fixed game, but it's a stake weighted game, so if you want more influence, you've got to have a stake.
If you're a beginner and you don't want to invest, you should power up all your posts for as long as it takes to get 10,000 SP. you should get yourself in with a crowd of people that can help you reach your goals. And, most importantly, you should be courteous and help people as much as you can along the way down your own path. It's no different than life.
As you are right, still the fact excist that whales upvote eachother a lot. They keep making more and more. For example. I have an article that someone upvoted. I had 7 upvotes in total with a total expected earnings of 0,19. 1 of this voters upvoted my article wrote: 'nice shot' and upvoted his own comment. He will get 1.42 sbd. So he upvotes me and 6 others but my earnings are 0,19 sbd. How is that even possible??? It is not all about hard work either. I see many post which have no valuable content or hard work in it earning much more then quality content of others. Eitherhow I like steem, but when someone comes with a better system steem will go down bcs of its unfair politics.
Thank you very much for your reply :)
Any time.