The rewards are all based on steem power. So someone with tons of steem power, their ONE upvote could be worth hundreds potentially. Haejin has a lot of delegated power (over 300k), which allows himself to pay himself hundreds of dollars per post.

Steemit isnt a totally fair system, but it's at least a way for us little guys to get some crypto for our work. It's not perfect, but it's better than anything else out there.