That is an excellent question.. First I think that what I have come to learn and what others miss is that unless you have around 1000sp.. your curation rewards are negligible at best and sticking to content creation and commenting would be the more lucrative endeavor.
That aside, I'm not so much sure that the curation process needs to be fixed as much as the fact that strict policies need to be brought about that prevent abuse of the system through bot accounts or one user transparently using other accounts to substantially increase their ability to either propel or crush content at a whim.
I also think that the relationship SP has to power should be reduced substantially and more weight should be given to reputation. I think that the reputation thing was brought about to limit the ability of a user whom consistently shows bad behavior to continue doing it. This however, is a mute point is the user has sufficient wealth as their SP far exceeds the impact their Rep has in the grand scheme of things. I could also see a limit being applied of say no more that $150 or so for a post or something along those lines. I think that would even the playing field a bit and may slow some abuse of the system. Until then I will just continue trying to play the game as good as the rest of them...