Don't take me wrong, I am a big supporter of steemit and thinking for ways to make it better. I think most people are not aware if they are making other people rich or not. Even in steemit, due to DPoS people with higher stakes will be easily richer (e.g. delegating SP to bots similar to dividends from a public company stocks ). But big stake holders can do better by improving steemit.
If steemit has to be better than other social-media sites, other than reward it has to fight with other socia media with good services (e.g. better user interfaces, celebrity users). It is synergy among reward, information and services. Without proper amount incentive, people looking for better information and service can go elsewhere. Good bloggers who can earn better per hour may go somewhere else or pursue other jobs. It is not just about the reward, it is about well compensated reward.
However, steemit is a good experiment, still in beta. It is still in exponential growth trajectory and things should be sorted out with experimentation.