The other problem which I'm sure you notice too is that early on people could actually earn a decent amount of Steem posting, blogging, interacting with the blockchain. So we knew at minimum there would be quality content generated over time.
Now? Now those days are gone. So we cannot even count on that. Steemit generates profit from ads but those aren't going to be shared outside of Steemit are they?
Overall, SMTs sound like a good idea but aren't necessarily going to result in more revenue. The Steemit team did a good job cost cutting and generating revenue for Steemit but the ecosystem and developers seem content to build nice tech toys which don't do anything economically speaking.
What I mean is, if we look at SPS, we can see SPS may or may not favor developments which increase revenue generating potential. We could end up with even more spending of Steem on toy projects which don't really do anything to grow the economy of Steem and yes the economy of Steem needs to be measured and grow.