A very astute observation Mr @calaber24p it appears that the motivation has moved to profit over quality of information. I have noticed this as well with some very good articles I felt were worthy of a good showing bringing in less than a buck on several occasions. It has led me to the exact same conclusion that the only thing that seems to pay very well on steemit is curation of those who get all the upvotes no matter the value of the content. It is as if content is irrelivant as the old adage in; "money talks and BS walks" stand true once again.
I am not sure what can be done, except that we keep trying to support and promote the worthy content as such the case might be. So good job at making this known and hopefully it will have a positive impact on some very talented writers as well as adding some awareness to this problem.