I see that the way to succeed here is to fulfil the original intent set out by the white paper, to ensure that the community subjectively rewards the best posts (as determined by the community and not just by one person or a small group). As long as posts reach the top due to buying votes (aka having the biggest wallet to begin with), people will reject the system and will view it as a kind of pyramid scheme. On the other hand, if posts are reaching the top due to their quality, then the system works and people will invest in the system for it's long term functional value, rather than for it's short term 'ROI'.

Increased investment means increased token value, which means increased value of rewards, which means more posts can be supported with a decent payout rate. The only way to make the distribution of slices of a cake more fair is to ensure that those cutting and distributing the slices are numerous enough that they can deal with the precision involved in a manageable way. Having 10 people voting with massive SP (delegated or not) can never be as effective as having 10,000 people voting with smaller portions of the SP.