Can't agree that payment on a post is 'represented as endorsement of quality'. It isn't always. It is simply expression of a view that the post or author should be rewarded by stakeholders. For example, it is perfectly legitimate for a post reporting on work that adds value to Steem to be deserving of rewards even if the post itself is poorly-written (in fact I find such a post more deserving than a well-written post which does nothing else to add value to Steem other than grace us with its presence, which I doubt adds much value, if any).
As you mentioned elsewhere it may be that these Steem Guild 'payment posts' are in some way dishonest, in that they don't simply say "vote for this post to support my work as a Steem Guild staff member". That's another question, but I wouldn't find anything wrong with the latter approach.
I see your point, though i think there's a difference between a post being rewarded because the author is describing the desirable actions he took (for example, the dude that put up that billboard last summer) and a post that gets an arbitraty upvote based on the author being entitled to a freebie.
Well, to be really honest they would have to say something like "ned gave me his vote to use on anything i want to support my work on steem guild, and im using it on my own post because thats just how i roll."
That said, honesty aside. Yeah, a whale can absolutely upvote bad content to reward good actions that are entirely unrelated to the merit of the content you're upvoting.
And yeah, a whale can absolutely support quality content on steemit.
But not at the same time. At least, not as long as the reward pool is fixed. Which is the whole problem with these guilds. theyre paying curators to cast small percentage votes on other peoples good content by casting large percentage votes on the curators bad content.
The result is a net loss for the good content.
--note (some of the beneficiaries of this are pretty cringeworthy. Some are pretty OK... but even the good stuff, the point of the program and votes as pay for curation is that these posts are getting votes that they otherwise would not merit based on their quality in a vacuum. This must work at cross purposes to the stated goal of these guilds)