The thing is that currently I see "whales" as guard dogs of steemit.
They decide which content is deemed good enough for the front page. It's good and bad. I wrote about it on my blog about "true power of whales" where their hidden agendas can impact the content we see and don't see. simple example is @berniesanders votes for weed topics.
I think that currently it's good because whales understand their powers and they are heavily invested in the platform so they decide to reward quality content that gives value instead of meme like content that can succeed in reddit.
I don't know how many whales bots are there bot that's one way of spreading the wealth he has. if he doesn't have the time to vote with 3 users and search good posts everyday so he decides to reward good content writers. by doing so those writers will act as his proxies and keep spreading the wealth.
If this were true, it would be great. Its not. I invite you to take a look at the top 100 money earning posts and judge the quaity for yourself.