If it's any consolation, I read this post entirely :)

Your thoughts aren't completely foreign to me either. I too got frustrated with seeing the disparity between earnings (and views... not even getting seen is what really bugged me too).

All I can suggest is to just stop caring about it. Ever since I just threw up my hands in the sky in despair and gave up on trying to compete or follow a similar path to the others, I've found that I am enjoying Steemit a lot more. I stopped caring about the amount of upvotes people have.. some of the followers I have the most enjoyment from communicating with are actually teeny tiny minnows with sub-$0.01 votes. But they read my post religiously sometimes, and I get a kick out of the fact people are enjoying my content.

I've found too that once I adopted this attitude, strangely enough my earnings went up too. Not that they are big, not by any stretch.

Whether or not whales earn more or skew the system... really, who cares? It doesn't really affect me.. I just try to focus on what's fun and succesful for me on here.

Steemit is going to face serious competition soon from other platforms, too. It's going to be interesting to see how platforms like Narrative (NRV) where no SP (and thus no 'whales) exist, will compare when they come out.

I myself am not fond of the fact whales have so much power, and cannot be dethroned on STEEM (ever, basically), but it being integral to the blockchain I doubt we will see it change.