Sadly, I do have to agree. If you look at payouts as a measure of quality Steemit is failed, and promoting quality is what it should do.
I have still had a lot of good things happening from the community. Two people are translating my comic and Steemit gives some reward to them that I with my creative commons art would not be able to give them, there is a lot of people who, like me, makes good original content, but it all happens to an annoying buzzing sound of high rollers gaming the whole thing high above the heads of the creative and hardworking people.
But as the whole thing is built right now there is nothing you can do about it if you do not have lots of Steem Power. Maybe Akasha or some of the other projects in the pipeline can do better.
Anyways - I reshared this as I can't get as angry as you about it :)