I don't really agree with most of your pessimism you wrote but I can appreciate your frustration.
And trying to think about how steempeak can help... I think the answer is in somewhere in not focusing on the reward pool. Focusing on the things steem does better.
It's also sad to see people like @howo and @therealwolf downvoting ... i would assume they aren't downvoting for abuse of rewards or plagarism but just to be petty and to sadly prove your point.
There are plenty of people like that on twitter and much much much worse.... the thing is there are so many people on twitter the chances of you running into them are so slim.
Steem is like a small town with small town drama and that's no fun make the town bigger and the drama won't go away but the chances of you running into the jerks greatly diminishes. Also creating communities makes it so you have lots of small towns and can either be in a town that has rules you like better or you can leave the small town and go to another and still be in steem the whole time.