Well, in all fairness, if you spent $5000 and a few years later the platform still has only a little over 11,000 users that are minnow and above you might be pretty unhappy about that.
As @artopium points out, the whales are keeping each other rewarded or rewarding in very small circles most of the time. If they were really spreading their votes around it would likely not be just 11,000+ in minnow and above. But the disparity due to small vote circles is keeping Steem small, while in the short-term being profitable to whales. That is a legitimate issue for someone to complain about.
I never said there wasn't anything to complain or be unhappy about.
The things you mentioned are concerns.
Though I have seen some data that suggests the amount of centralization of whales is diminishing and that smaller users are becoming bigger users.
Also since the recent HF I've personally noticed on my page and others a lot more whale votes going around to smaller users as well.
Time will tell what happens, though I'm seeing a lot of positive signs.