Well one benefit of the low price is that the steempower you get for each post is higher - which means that you earn steempower at an accelerated pace.
The downside is that you end up with posts that don't even make the 2 cent cutoff despite getting lots of votes.
I think lots of people have become discouraged because of the latter issue, rather than because they are spammers. There is something really depressing about getting 20 votes and earning $0.00 because they've rounded it down because the price suddenly fell on payout day.
True. Patience is tested and people who don't care if their vote will add some money will stay here and that is not too bad in my opinion.