I can't think of one service that is 100% right all the time, and I'm not only talking about crypto, but I hear you, and I share your frustrations.
I happen to think that Oracles might be the ones to save us from ourselves, as long as we are smart enough to stack the different levels of approvability and lever them against a databases of consensus.
Now this would operate parallel to steem, trading against it, so that we could effectively attempt to create a healthier environment, not by completely eliminating the ugly, but by controlling it, removing some incentives (the ego driven ones mainly) and effectively building a wall (triggering words there) between quality content and gaming of trending.
Have you by any chance watched the video shared by SteemitBlog?... it gave me a bit of hope, it really did...
I am looking forward to the new systems just because I like learning, we are in beta.
I'm not a technical person and have no clue about how systems work until I get into the system and work with it, I learn from doing.
I've read about SMTs and oracles, but I haven't watched the video. I will check it out @memo.
My gut and reading history tells me you can't regulate morality or greed through math/algorithms and government enforcement. I think that makes black markets and criminals. The only thing that works controlling greed is fear of going to hell, and some people don't care whether they go to hell.
If someone can come up with some math and a system that can even the economic playing field here on Steemit while mitigating scammer-easy-money mentality we can apply it to all economies, it would change the world!