Well, the displayed money is whatever the author chooses as the payout option, either steem power or steem/sbd 50/50 split, or none to the author.

Most people use bots, using bots is profitable. With every hard fork and version upgrade there's some small change to how the economy works set in stone. What you see happen on steemit trends very close to the optimized curve for how to make the most money for yourself based on the math set forth in these changelogs. Then there is the interplay of whale activity, their utilization of bots, and various settings that witnesses can change and which witnesses are voted to the top.

So until the community moves against bots or self-voting or circular voting in droves you'll continue to see those methods of making money be used because, well, profit motive. Votes are weighted by wealth so it's not really a democracy at all.