I don't like the new claim either :-) The gap between user expectations and reality is already big enough. Aggressively pushing the financial aspect won't help to control that at all. It might get even worse. Also - as you realized pretty well - it will keep away people who're looking for a free market that's not governed by money.Thanks for your valuable thoughts, @enjar!
If you don't invest you need a pretty good strategy to be seen as you perfectly described. Not jumping on every trending post is surely a good tactic. The highly desired community feature might help us all to find our niches and capitalize them successfully.
I am looking forward to communities feature as well if it is done right. I know a few places I really enjoy leaving comments in and being engaging. They have a great desire to create a better place on Steemit for their kind of engagement such as comments and having a discussion.
It will be interesting to see how that feature shapes the community. I just hope it makes finding certain types of content easier to find. Current system I might as well use an outside search engine to find things most of the time.