They never became dolphins (only those early enough to have profited from the early inflation had that chance).
I didn't profit from the early inflation, I worked hard, I earned, I powered up, I engaged, I made friends, I helped people I learned to trade a bit, I struggled, made errors, worked for cents if that...
The rewards pool was meant to encourage quality original content
Maybe in the early days but, not in the decentralized application era. Things have progressed, this isn't a blogging site exclusively and hasn't been for a long time now.
When a commodity price is too high people stops buying it and looks for alternatives.
Yep, there is nothing wrong with that, this is the laws of supply and demand in play and there is nothing saying that Steem has to have the entire world involved to be successful. There are going to be millions of blockchains and niches created that will empower some while excluding others.
What ROI will have the delegators when there is no customers?
I await the day that bidbots are dead. I have put forward several proposals for it and it isn't, offer a better return for customers.
Well not all of us are well off and if we want people to stay here we need to incentive them somehow.
Again, the blockchain is no where near ready in development to support as a charity yet, that is essentially how people seem to see it. The entire industry is ten years old and highly volatile yet there are people trying to use it as a steady income?
I myself spend between 4 to 12 hours a day doing steem related stuff when not posting, and if we want minnows working for us we need to pay them.
I have spent that almost every day here for 2 years. I see it as being an entrepreneur small business owner though. Work hard for nothing and reinvest until it becomes something.