Merit or money. What should be used to get upvote for your post ?

Well,

Steemit is not steemit. I mean its not it used to be. It was an awesome platform where everyone had a chance to grow and because of that it attracted alot of people but then things started to change. Whales started to take control of it and now it has reached a stage where there is no room for growth for the newbies and minnows and only the whales make profit here.

Its like the Whales are eating the rest of the community. And the biggest weapon that they have is the voting bots. There is not a single upvote that would be given for good content but all the votes are being sold. If you have a sh1ty post but you have money to upvote it using bots, boom, your pathetic post starts earning money and if you have a very awesome post and you don't use voting bots, your posts makes 0 profit.

So steemit is like,

1. Write a post.
2. Use voting bots to upvote your pathetic post.
3. Earn profit.

I have no problem with point 1 & 3 but point 2, is that ok, i mean why is it so that they get paid for something that should be done free of charge on merit basis for every post.

Think about it.