Thanks @bobinson. Please check out trafalgar’s comments (especially the top comment here). Even with SMTs and communities, they will take a very long time to take effect, and there’ll still be core Steem distribution anyway, until they remove the rewards pool. All of these are a big IF.
Just think of Steem as an MMORPG with SP as some buy-in weapon or levelling mechanism. It’ll have proper value if the game works. And it very likely can - just align the path of profit maximisation to that of the benefit of the platform. Now it’s just not working. I’m pretty convinced by increasing curation rewards, moving away from linear, and having some “free” downvotes will solve the problem. As per the 3 items proposed. Just need some devs convinced about this as well. It’s the only thing I talk about the whole year and even flew halfway round the world to SF3 to remind people about it. Honestly we think it’s just 1% of the effort required compared to SMTs for turning the tables of a completely dysfunctional content discovery and rewards platform.
Anyway, check out trafalgar’s comments around here. Honestly I think he’s one of the smartest and most rational investors around.