I find my self also voting in things that will make give me the greatest reward other then the greatest satisfaction for reading it. There is a few things that need to change and you nailed them in your post better then what I have read from others.
I also have been on steem for roughly 6 weeks and I have made maybe 10-15 steem for my posts and invested with bitcoin for the rest, I am at 1200 steem power now. I really like the platform and glad I found it. Like you I think these issues can be fixed in the long run and I plan to stay.
keep it up. i see a lot of people here being successful by keep writing and getting more followers.
you see in this post i got 20 votes, a few of these are new and some are from people that follow me. If I had 1k followers i would probably make a few hundred each post. This way its only a few cents but its a start.
1200 steem could be worth a lot soon.