Thanks for calling attention to the problem. I've only been active on Steemit for about a month and have just started to gain some understanding of the larger structure. I think what trips a lot of new users up, or rather, what keeps them from engaging in this conversation is a complete lack of awareness that this conversation even exists and needs to happen. In my case, I definitely approached the platform initially like you would any other social media/blogosphere. But it inherently has to be a community driven system.
I think we are starting to see the pressure points of decentralized platforms. Direct democracies are cool and all, but when the village is too big for group talk to actually happen, then you end up with a defacto oligarchy.
I'm not saying that there aren't viable solutions, but it may involve some protocol tweaking.