The problem with people getting ultra comfortable its when they have already did some money and their only interests here its to earn more and more from unethical methods.
This is good for them, but this doesnt grow organic this community, people put their minds, their time, their skills and soul to create great content here but are not rewarded at all by their merits and steemit was created for people to fight and compete with big players from online world.
The way the things goes now, old users will never be changed by new ones and should have no stress about it because as a real content creator when you have no money to invest to compete with dolphins/wales and you see huge difference in payments between good and shit posts you decide to step back and do your own blog where you can earn more than 40 cents per week.
When you are good content creator, you cant simple stay here and spend your half day time or night writing from passion because sometimes you need to eat and its much better if you find jobs on infinite websites where you create content for money on specific themes and you need to use 200-500 words and the money comes after job done, not in 7 days.
The whales who can curate hundreds of great posts and ecourage people to join this platform based on their earnings and quality of time spend here, they decide to do more money with bots, chase high payed posts, chase big curation rewards and dont give a shit about good content.
This way of developing your business doesnt help you at all on long term, you will not be replaced as whale, but soon you will have less and less people who create content just because doesnt afford to buy upvotes or promote themselves and in the end your steem power will worth less and less, for example bitcoin went back to 7.5k usd but STEEM going down from 2.4usd to 1.35usd and people keep selling.
If whales makes a plan to revigorate this scene, in next year steem can stay easy at 3usd-4usd and they will earn way more than now, but they focus on short term winning.
If you want to have people to invest in steem, first you need people who join steemit and from thousands, some on them will start buying steem and power up, but when community is unhappy 100% they will not recommend to friends.
You are a passionate writer, great one, but you have 1.5 years and i believe you invested in sp here, you are privileged as well, but starting from scratch with empty belly will be harsh mood/time for new comers to keep their enthusiasm and remain after a while.
Passion its something unique for everybody, but keeping that passion alive you need to have something from Maslow Pyramid.
Its way too much to talk about the path and goals of steemit, believe it or not, all depend by the whales and dolphins because here nobody can take your place, the problem is when not many what to be part of this blockchain(steemit) and have his place because of some.
I have posting something close to your ideas if you want to take a look on my last post https://steemit.com/steemit/@dombusiness/looks-like-it-doesn-t-matter-if-its-a-shit-post-when-you-chase-curation-rewards