Thank you for clarification. It is the value of the votes not the number of votes. But my argument still goes through. You said,
It's much better to upvote a great post small minnow that has a good chance of getting "noticed" and attracting more votes
But for the same reason, It is much better to upvote a great (or mediocre) post of a whale since he has much more followers and much higher chance of getting "noticed" and attracting more votes.
Do you often see a minnow gets more than $100 with a post? Probably not.
The fundamental problem of the curation system is that there is no incentive to vote for a quality post but for a post which will get more votes(value). This incentive results in herding behavior - vote because other will vote. And the target of this herding is mostly a whale. This is what we have seen. haven't we?
I think this is a misconception about how the curation reward system works. Whales will get large payouts on their posts - that's for sure, but they usually get a lot of that payout very early on so there's no opportunity to earn curation rewards.
It's really the hidden gems that have little to no votes that can provide the most curation value. Right now those posts usually never get many votes but if a whale votes on it to try to get the curation rewards then it would make the post hit the "hot" list on some categories and if it's really a good post it could earn even more votes, giving value to both the author and that initial whale curator.
Will that happen? I don't know, i'm only proposing a discussion not to actually make any changes, but it's possible I think it would be great if it could happen that way.