Basically, I concur with what you're saying.
New people see the trending page and think they can easily make a lot of money.

Creating something worthwhile takes time. Build your story, get the facts right, get some images, format it using Markdown (yuck), proofreading and finally posting.

The way Steemit is built makes it virtually impossible for others to find your posts, it will be snowed under within a minute.

It is only after they have been here a while, and if they're not yet disappointed, that they will see the rewards grow.

Many don't understand it is as important to respond to other posts as it is to create your own posts.

Something I try to do and see missing quite a lot, is upvoting comments. People take time to respond and I find it is important for me to acknowledge the effort they put in.

The situation with the whales is unfortunately built-in to Steemit, there is a reason you can only power-down over a period of time.