First, no voting and commenting is not the best way to earn SP. Mining is far superior as far as I can tell. I've earned 4-5SP through mining in the last few days, and maybe 1SP in the last week or two.

Second, the problem isn't that minnow votes are low powered... it's that they are value-less. I've seen posts upvoted into the double digits with no reward whatsoever, and posts with around 4 votes worth $20. Meanwhile a dolphin can vote on their own comment and earn money.

The other thing I'm noticing with comments is that people don't vote on them. I comment far, far more than I write and have gotten a few upvotes... but I've gotten more people actually replying and saying "good comment" or similar who did not upvote. I realize the algorithm was changed to put more emphasis on comments but that doesn't seem to be working when people don't vote on comments...

And still the major problem is that this creates a strong motivation to vote for what you think whales will like, rather than what you like. There's a strong anarchist population here, for instance, so voting anarchy stuff is a better bet than voting for anything "statist" or even things about current politics. That may sound fine to you, but if we actually want the platform to go mainstream we're not going to draw people in as a 24/7 anarchy platform. People with other political beliefs need to be able to meaningfully upvote quality posts supporting their viewpoint as well, especially for Steemit to go mainstream.

This probably should be more coherent but I should have been asleep an hour ago. :(