To start, we know the development team is not great at communication. That said, there is just not one vision. Blockchain is a collective intelligence going many different directions until it finds it way. Steemit is just one application...it might or might not be relevant in a few years. There are other applications which have a different vision. What model ultimately wins? We shall see. With so many being created, there will be a lot to experiment with.
In the end, users are not going to care about STEEM nor the vision of it. What they will care about is the application they are using. If that fits the need that person has, it is a site that will be frequently visited. The fact it is on STEEM will not matter to the individual.
I sense you are trying to centralize the direction and vision when it is decentralized. You can look at it as there are thousands of visions, or there are none. It is all subject to whatever anyone wants to create. The collection of all these developments is what will be the overall vision. It will be morphed into as opposed to consciously developed.