Just another brick in the wall of failure.
Incentivizing people to become power users, and then not requiring any further contribution back to the community at large creates static power networks that don't do anyone any good.
Unless you're in the "club" of course.
Sounds like any power structure ever attempted across the planet, and they aren't that stable either. Steemit is doomed unless there are changes to this.
Otherwise it will just be a bunch of top-tier users voting for each other, and bots all the way down. Who needs humans when you just want to scrape another buck off of gaming the system.