steemit said the rich will be getting richer and screw the little guys

Nobody said that. In fact, everyone is getting poorer at this rate.

What has been said is these are steps which a significant number of Steem stakeholders (and certainly not all whales or even close) believe can start to make a difference in righting the ship. We may all turn out to be wrong for whatever reasons, but the effort is sincere.

Literally no one is trying to get rich or richer by shifting a few percent of token rewards around on an asset depreciating by 90% per year. That's absurd.