The problem is also about few people with tons of SP (aka whales) which just can't curate such amount of content being created in a single unit of time. It is cognitive overload.
This is the long-and-short of the story.
That means that only well known members of the community can hope that their posts will be spotted and valued. But in order to become well know you either should invest tons of money in the project or be well known person from outside the project.
I don't think this is the case. There have been many people have taken the time to build their reputations on here... through posts, comments, through adding value to the community and/ or networking etc. When I joined it was easy to get noticed. Now it's more difficult but by no means impossible. The size of Steemit is such that simply posting good content and hoping whales will see it (let alone vote for it) probably isn't enough. Newcomers need to put in that bit extra to get noticed. But that would be the case on pretty much any social media platform that has gained a bit of traction.