Yeah you are completely right. Hard work does pay off.
However, your own example of your recent decrease in reward is what I then find to be the broken element. Because it may just be so, that something new, something more flashy, has then taken focus, thus taken reward away from you, and had it land onto them.

That then would suggest a system which is controlled. That control then in the hands of a select few.. which, by whatever belief, then bestow reward down only to those which they see deserving.

That then, it not a system equal to all. That's corruption.
Such a system is also not sustainable.
It creates loop holes which give rise to even more corruption.
Which then ultimately becoming too hard to manage.. and the system collapses.

Until the system is repaired. I don't see any other path for it.

ps: Your avatar gives impression that you are not a real person account.
Not at all an insult to the image chosen. It's just that there are so many spam accounts here which chose a pretty half clad girl to lure others.. so at first I thought you were another spam account.