Please, let me clear out what a social network is NOT:

1. It's not a place where you get rewarded based on the quality of your content
2. It's not a place where everyone can earn equally
3. It's like any "society".

You get paid for the relevance of your own profile. That said, on Steemit it's actually pretty easy to get seen and I think it's not a scam for that. A scam is something that doesn't work, not something that doesn't work properly.

We can argue about who earns the most and the power of the whales, but they got what the users wanted them to got. The value of a post is individually calculated and "how to draw an ear" is more interesting, for example - in my opinion - then "How to live in Pakistan". Simply because from a user point of view, I want to draw a ear, I don't want to live in Pakistan.

Everyone has different tastes and, based on how much of your audience you can gather, you earn. Everything is based on that concept, because traffic and interest are money. Especially in a social network.

Anyway, your point about the voting power is cool and I think they're solving it :)