Well I believe the bots have just made sure there is a monopoly ish system on steemit.
It's not about quality from what I've seen. I just see a person dish out balderdash in his blog and swish! a triple figure amount on the post, while another struggles to write from the heart and spends hours, rigorous hours typing and scrutinizing to make the posts steemit actually need(quality content) only to see a few cents stare him back in the face sadly.
It's really sad and the funniest thing is that it seems uncontrollable. Like who are you to stop anybody else from doing his thing?
Do you provide the money he pumps into the bots to make sure he trends and actually has a mansion at the apex of that trending page??
No! Nahh! Nope! You don't!
So we just have to chill and sit and watch everything happening while we hope things will change for the better in good time.