There's zero correlation between pending payout and "quality of content".

That is not completely true though. It is not zero. But being mightily friends with a whale (or more) brings more $ then being good.

edit:
Yesterday I wrote a bit about the tradegy of the commons
https://steemit.com/life/@lennstar/the-tragedy-of-the-untended-commons
and there will be more commons based posts in the future. So if you are interested in this topic, how people can work with each other without screwing themselves up, be free to follow ;)