I'm probably as much of a cynic as you are, and I don't for a moment think that this is "the answer" to anything.
It is, however — at least from my perspective — at least a tiny light in the murk that can perhaps remind people that Hive is a social site, of sorts.
Of course there are going to be those who will try to just harvest some rewards from this... but isn't that the case with all walks of life, everywhere? Someone will try to take advantage of the system.
And I certainly wouldn't by writing about it if there wasn't a provision that only the comments that are upvoted by the OP actually qualifies to share in the reward base. And so, those posting "just to get some extra tips" are easily enough excluded by simply not upvoting their comment (it only has to be 1%, btw).
Should you find your way back here, you might notice that most of the engagement on this post has actually turned out to be pretty authentic, and much of it is coming from people who have been around for a long time.
As to the whole engagement issue, it is definitely true that many people are too busy "keeping an eye on the money," but I expect they would be a little less concerned if we currently had $1.00 Hive, in turn meaning that you could still upvote a decent comment with just 10% and get above the "dust threshold." CommentRewarder is likely most relevant when the price of Hive is really low, like it is now.
As for Hive being a "properly working" social network — as per @xplosive — I fear that ship probably sailed 7-8 years ago when everyone was so busy promoting this place on the premise of "join our community and make money, money, MONEY!!!"
We tend to get precisely what we advertise for...