Can money motivation decrease the quality of posts on Steemit platform?

If you compare Steemit to another blog based social networks, like Tumblr, Reddit etc. you’ll very soon notice one of the main differences that make Steemit stands tall: You can be paid for your blogs! That’s the thing that makes this project wonderful and unique. No question about that. The positive aspects are often emphasized, so I wouldn’t talk about that much.
But does money motivation reveal another, darker side? Can money motivation decrease the quality of posts?

Here is how I understand things from my limited minnow perspective.

If you’re a minnow, no one will see your post. At least a very few. So it doesn’t matter if you make some great post or you put some stupid Google image in a couple of seconds and proclaim it a post. That leads us to the following question. What’s the main force that would make a difference? What’s the mechanism that rewards quality?
For sure that force isn’t contained in bots from Discord, to which I’m thankful a lot cause those bots are very useful and inevitable for minnows. However, they’re going to reward every post no matter of its quality. Nor it’s exchange of upvotes with other users (mainly minnows).

The main force is in RESPONSIBLE Steemians. Those who would really read and reward quality stuff and ignore bluffs.
Only responsible citizens of Steemit can make their country big.

I call for more experienced Steemians who read this post to tell their opinion about this theme. I find their experience priceless.