"The minnows are effectively paying the whales money. If im wrong here please enlighten me."

The minnows aren't paying anything. Most of them are a drain on the platform. It costs money to setup their accounts and delegate bandwidth and Steem to them. The vast majority probably never invest any money at all.

The only people bringing value to this platform are investors, quality content creators, and the actual developers. Minnows are usually none of these.