Someone please explain to me how STEEMit is different from a Feudal system?

Let me start with the fact that I'm new to Steemit. I opened an account months ago but haven't posted on here because from what I've read, it seems to be controlled/dominated by a handful of people and pools that essentially use the platform to enrich themselves, making it pointless to create or post good content when all the pooled proceeds get siphoned off by the top 1%. This seems to me to be actually worse than our current American economic model. It looks to me like Feudal system with a handful of lords dominating not through creating valuable anything but simply through already owning the STEEM and all the rest of the population are serfs picking up crumbs...

I think the concept is really cool in principle and would like to participate but from what I see my participation basically only creates value for the Whales/Lords. And I'm not getting into the use of/manipulation with bots.

So please someone explain to me why I'm wrong. I would love to hear the counter-arguments. I am very open minded, I just don't like being taken advantage of so if someone can explain this to me I would appreciate it. Otherwise, I will lurk and occasionally read articles on crypto (which is actually the only unique and interesting content I've found on here so far).

Thanks. No offense to anyone just observations from what I understand.