I think steemit harness something like the free market with its voting process so that the content that is subjectively considered the best by the majority wins out. This may mean that those who simply want to make money will not focus on creating good content and so will not get rewarded, and others may play the system by giving the majority want they want, but that's valuable so they should get rewarded.

I, like you, hope to be able to learn from the platform, and to this end it is my hope that as steemit develops it will support a diverse range of interests. I think the community will become savvy and avoid up voting those after an easy buck, but this will take time and is be part evolution of the community. The danger is if too many people are turn off by what they perceive as poor content winning the popular vote.