The biggest problem here is that so much of the STEEM was mined before they started giving it out.

So, "whales" isn't a proper term. "super whales" might be better.

When i started it was almost impossible for plankton to get to the level of payout. That first $0.02 was a killer.

The white paper has a nice graph about paying the best people the most, and the long tail all gets some. But this graph isn't anywhere close to the reality. The actual graph is much steeper, and then the tail is chopped off.

So, reputation is a pain in the ass thing.
Because we live in a world where an account is an account, whether it is a trusted member of the community (like @papa-pepper) or a sock-puppet, to the computers, they are identical.

Thus, a thousand sock-puppets are more powerful than @papa-peppers hundreds of followers.

Basically what is needed is a web of people that vouch for each other.
In fact, if i was to do a universal bulletin board, i would make autonomous, self forming blobs. Where the likes and dislikes on something come from only the people you interact with.

This unfortunately makes everyone's (computer) views different. But, it also allows many disparate groups to exist in the same ecosphere.

For steem, i would suggest lists, that are shareable. Instead of having only your feed, you could have several, and they could be public or private. (they should also be able to toggle resteems). In this way, you could create groups within steem.

But, the problem of reward distribution remains.