RE: Becoming financially literate earlier in life associated with reduced anxiety later in life according to study
What you call "friends" I call followers.
If you didn't know, value is subjective. You don't know what goes on in the brains of others who consume my content. So you cannot by yourself determine quality. Curation in any field is going to be subjective.
Does something make you laugh? Did it tell you something you didn't know already? Did it save you time or effort? These are all subjective. If you add value consistently then people upvote you and if you don't then you don't get those upvotes.
If you're jealous then add more value in your posts. If you think my posts don't add value why read them? Look at my stats, over 5000 followers, less than 5000 posts, which means the post to follower ratio indicates that either my posts are very high quality or whales are distributing their Steem across hundreds or perhaps thousands of accounts just to upvote me.
Lots of people pay lip service to "creating change so that there will be a more equitable distribution of the rewards pool" but nobody is willing to be the first to quit sucking the teet.
You can decide to view it as a conspiracy working against you but if you leave Steem another person who is willing to post consistently and earn their fan base will take your place. No, my upvotes didn't come for free or out of the blue, as it took 2 years of posting on Steem consistently.
Plenty of people also make way more than me, making $500 a post on here, and I don't complain because why take on the victim mentality? Why worry about what the next person is doing? They are forced to abide by the same rules as me and if they are doing better than me then I can learn to improve from them. If my content isn't something you appreciate but 100 others do and so they upvote it, well you can discuss it with those who upvoted it.
Blogging isn't enough
If your goal is to make change then in my opinion blogging isn't enough. If your goal is to create a better world you have to do a lot more than merely blog, vlog, etc. Sure it does contribute content and this content at the very minimum can save people time, make people happy, educating people in subjects they didn't previously know about, and this does in my opinion deserve to be rewarded, but to make a bigger impact Steem itself has to expand it's ecosystem beyond mere blog and curate.
I don't blame you if you decide to power down and leave but I do not think it's fair to blame people who are more successful at blogging. Improve and grow the ecosystem by actually expanding the things people can do in order to create value for it. If you don't want to do that then you can contribute to something else which you think has a greater chance of benefiting the world with your effort.
I'll somewhat agree with your preposition that we're all born with "opportunity."
And, based on the actual thought and work you've put into these replies, I'm even willing to upvote them.
I offered my way for how Steem can be used to improve the world. I think to improve the world we must increase the utility of Steem as a whole. I view blogging as an activity which adds marginal utility until eventually it doesn't. Sooner or later there will be too many bloggers (diminishing marginal utiliy) and adding additional bloggers will not make the Steem Power holders any happier or more satisfied due to there being so much content that they simply don't have the attention available to consume it all.
I think Steem as a whole using SMTs can move beyond just blogging so we can all add value in our own little ways and be rewarded. I see SMTs as being able to unlock the potential of Steem to make the world better by allowing people to do more of what they are good at. I may find out I'm not best able to contribute by blogging because the HodgeTwins are just better at it. If SMTs allow me to do something else, something I'm very good at, I can continue to contribute rather than be required to blog or leave.
References
I stand corrected.
Some people rather believe they are the victim of some vast conspiracy theory rather than figure out how to improve their content, their discipline, or what they are doing.
If we apply that thinking then one comedian could claim another is funny because the illuminati is behind it. But this makes the world better how? If the goal is to keep coming up with better jokes what do you add by complaining about someone else's content?
Your choice how you spend your time. Good luck if you wish to power down.