I actually agree with a lot of your points. Thanks so much for sharing this post. I also noticed that it seems to be much harder to earn Steem tokens now compared to when the Steemit first started. I think the early bloggers also benefited from being able to network and make friends early here on Steemit so there's normally a larger audience available to upvote their posts.
For new users getting onto the site, it can be rather difficult to start this process. Additionally, a lot of new users don't have enough Steem power to make large impacts with their upvotes.
The start is hard for anyone new indeed, except if you already went through the grind on another platform and are well known.