Reward pool essentially is a stake-based consensus algorithms, where combination of upvotes/downvotes not only determines what gets seen in trending, but also determines rewards distribution.

There is widespread cultural hostility toward high-stake Steemians, yet distribution is trending toward decreased concentration, which means many smaller accounts are 'benefiting' at whale accounts expense.

If there is a widespread hostility toward whales that is NOT backed by data, then I consider envy to be the next best explanation. It could be argued that greed/envy are two sides of the same coin (I should have more / that person has too much and I don't like how they're using it because none of it trickles to me).