I agree, curation can be used in a greedy way (and I've been guilty of that myself when I started curating on steemit!). But from what I understand it's either that or no curation rewards at all :).
For now I think it's a necessary evil. It seems impossible to avoid without killing the incentives for curating stuff. But I would be curious to know if you Pawsdog or others have ideas on how it could be fixed or at least attenuated.
RE: Are curation rewards part of the problem?