Is something being lost in all the discussion about all rewards and votes?

I understood that the reason for voting on the platform was to use it as a mechanism to promote good content, not necessarily to spread out rewards. Isn't spreading out rewards just a second order affect, a reward for creating good content? Spreading out rewards does not necessarily increase the quality of the content or promote good content. At one extreme it will let users spam steemit to get a share of the rewards devaluing the system in the long run.