Amen! That is where I am at. The same very reason I spend a good deal of time writing detailed thorough comments to people even though it may make no monetary rewards. Followers and collaborations are extremely valuable to each user and a high payout on a comment may be only a one time thing.
You are correct about long term thinking. It's too early for people to give up on for price fluctuations. The days of $15,000 introduce yourself posts may not come back, but I think that is ok. In my opinion, there are plenty of other more valuable contributions to steemit than introduce yourself posts. But people determined the value and I think that was good to bring some people on board, but may have sacrificed quality and people thinking that posting a quick bio would make them rich.
To the best of my knowledge a lot of this happened before sliding percentages were put into place, so you couldn't vote on a comment with anything but full power. I think there are a lot of great minds working mostly behind the scenes. People like @donkeypong are tirelessly working to make steemit something that people enjoy using and are rewarded for.
A lot of great minds congregated around a single community has to breed some amazing ideas. I'm excited to see where steemit will be after steemfest especially.