Hi Kevin.. as a new minnow I see you joined in 2016. Perhaps the early bird caught the worm such as yourself and you are doing very well. As the platform grows, minnows try to catch up as the reward pool is mostly a conglomerate of veterans holding much of the steem power. It’s harder to be noticed by whales, and many whales have made connections with each other. Without bid bots or what not I would probably only have half my steem power available. Some of my content is very good but gets little notice. So if whales were to commit to help minnows more than often I would agree buying votes would not be needed. However  you have greed and some whales are in business. So unfortunately it’s kind of a state of affairs in steemit now. Minnows depend on it right now.

Thanks for taking time to read Kevin.. just a struggling minnow.