One more thing I'll add

Is my incentive to become a whale that I can dictate to the community how their post reward distribution opinion is wrong for the future of steemit based on my subjective perseption of value?

Most of the rewards on these posts come from whale (or at least demi-whale) upvotes. Don't fool yourself that it is minnows driving these posts to Trending; it isn't. It works both ways. If someday the stake distribution is different, then that will be different too, but for now it makes no sense to assume whale upvotes are legitimate by default but condemn whale downvotes. It is all a formula that allocates rewards based on a consensus (even if not perfectly uniform agreement) of stakeholders.