Imo, what needs to occur is the complete stripping away of Steem Power from the whales and force-delegating their power to many, many others, based on rep.

So then, your rep level would be the determinant factor for how much of the whales Steem Power you get to apply to posts you upvote.

The whales would still earn all the money for their delegated power, of course. It's theirs and so that's only fair.

But the result will be that many more people will make a good income on this platform, instead of only a small percentage.

It also means "Steemit" and "Steem" tagged posts won't necessarily be the dominant earners - and isn't it about time we kicked the geeks to the curb anyway? (jk) :)

Giving the whales delegation control obviously isn't going to work. They still like keeping it and voting for the same people over and over again, manually or by bots.

At some point this has to happen, because the people coming in have a certain expectation of growth in their earnings, but the whales aren't doing anything to help make some of that expectation a reality for enough people.

Steemit will never be anything more than a social networking "club" of "good ole' boys" if the whales are allowed to continue wielding all of their power.

And let's face this fact as well: half the time these good ole' boy whales are voting with their penises and not their brains.

It's time to kill the whales.